Another Apple-Funded App Store Study

Juli Clover (Slashdot, Hacker News):

As Apple CEO Tim Cook gears up to testify in an App Store antitrust hearing before the House Judiciary Committee next week, Apple has commissioned a study from Analysis Group [PDF] that’s designed to demonstrate how similar Apple’s App Store fees and practices are to those of other digital marketplaces like the Amazon Appstore and the Google Play app.

Not mentioned anywhere in the study: Stripe, PayPal, Paddle, FastSpring, etc. Apple would rather compare itself to brick-and-mortar stores and Ticketmaster than the various online software channels that have been available since the mid-1990s. And, of course, the main issue with the App Store is that it’s the only way users can install software on their devices. You can’t opt out of it because there is no sideloading. There are no alternative stores. The whole way this is framed is misleading.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

I just commissioned a study that confirmed that I am in fact the fairest king in all of the land.

Cabel Sasser:

They keep saying the App Store changed everything because before you had to sell your apps in CompUSA or whatever. Panic ONLY EXISTS because we could sell apps, direct to consumer, via download, since 1999. The App Store arrived in 2008. Drives me crazy that they ignore this era.

Michael Love:

Also true for Palm and Windows Mobile, though they keep insisting on comparing themselves to crappy carrier-run J2ME app stores.

Also, if you didn’t want to handle payments yourself, Mac shareware developers had Kagi from way back when - I used them to sell my little Mac shareware game Ergo in 1994, rate was 5% + $1.25 I believe.

Kyle Pflug:

It’s revealing that this spends no time on whether the “other marketplaces” are the exclusive way to get third party software on their home platform.

The Microsoft Store and Steam both have commission, but they also compete with each other (and direct download, and retail...).

Matt Garber:

The 30% cut is a distraction anyway, which Basecamp also pointed out weeks ago. The real anticompetitive parts are around ridiculous things like not even being allowed to use descriptive text to say “sign up for paid accounts on our website”.

Michael Love:

a) “Everybody else does it” is not a defense

b) Brick and mortar is a meaningless comparable

c) Many of these stores were following your lead

d) Most of them are non-exclusive (except consoles, but their business model is selling HW at cost + making money on games)

Previously:

• The Talk Show Remote From WWDC 2020
• Highway Robbery
• European App Store Antitrust Investigation
• Software Before the App Store
• App Store Monopoly Lawsuit
• Spotify: Time to Play Fair
• Antitrust, the App Store, and Apple
• Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store “Tax”
• Kagi, RIP

Update (2020-07-23): John Gruber:

You know you’re in trouble when part of your argument is “Hey, at least we’re better than Ticketmaster.”

Peter N Lewis:

I’ve been doing this full time since 1994 - what made it easy was companies like Kagi and sources like Info-Mac, decades before the App Store.

Ron Avitzur:

Same here. Selling Graphing Calculator direct to customers online since 1998.

Brent Simmons (tweet):

But it’s worth remembering that money really does matter. […] To put it in concrete terms: the difference between 30% and something reasonable like 10% would probably have meant some of my friends would still have their jobs at Omni, and Omni would have more resources to devote to making, testing, and supporting their apps.

Update (2020-09-07): Joe Rossignol:

Apple today announced that the iOS app economy has created nearly 300,000 new jobs in the United States since April 2019, citing research shared by Dr. Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the non-profit Progressive Policy Institute.