Google Matches Apple's Plan To Give Developers A Bigger Cut of The Revenue (recode.net) 44
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Recode: Apple announced a new revenue sharing model on Wednesday that would give developers more money when users subscribe to a service via their apps. Instead of keeping 70 percent of all revenue generated from subscriptions, publishers will be able to keep 85 percent of revenue, once a subscriber has been paying for a year. Google has decided to match Apple's latest offering. It too will move from a 70/30 split to a 85/15 split for subscriptions. However, instead of requiring developers to hook a subscriber for 12 months before offering the better split, it will make it available right away. Sources have said Google has been testing the new model over a year ago with video services in a way to get Play subscriptions to work with its TV streaming offerings like the Chromecast. Google has yet to announce when their new pricing plan will roll out. In other Google and Apple related news, Google's AI 'TensorFlow' software is coming to iOS to allow the iPhone to be able to run more sophisticated apps.
In other related news. (Score:2)
No one cares about related news, stop doing it.
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At least this time it was vaguely related inasmuch as it's involving the same companies. Otherwise, I concur.
Tacking other stories onto the end of summaries is just fucking irritating.
BeauHD, why do you keep ignoring us when we tell you to stop?
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B-b-but, I was so sure...
I'm going for a lie down, this has all been too much.
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I do [care about related news].
Then jump to the "Related Links" section, that's what it's done for. Putting it in the summary is just redundant and annoying.
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if an app on my iPhone crashed or just became horribly unresponsive to the point of being useless, would that count?
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Probably more to do with they are each making so much profit from app stores for so little work, they can each follow the competitive pricing to the bottom without even bothering to do the sums.
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It seems obvious to me that they are merely reaction to each other's actions.
And this time it's better for the developers so I don't really see anything negative here.
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Capitalism is a crock, and it's always better (lowest risk, highest reward) to cooperate either tacitly or overtly.
it's only the idiots at the bottom that are taught successfully that's it's best to compete.
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Not really. It strikes me more as a controlled leak on Google's part to try and derail Apple's intended narrative.
Apple announced the change in advance of WWDC next week because, to paraphrase, "the keynote speech is just too full of stuff to cover this". More or less, they're trying to build good press in advance, bring more awareness to the event, whet people's appetite for more announcements, and get some positive momentum going into the event. Which is especially needed on their part right now, because
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It's "coordinating" inasmuch as Google depends on this money more than Apple does and thus doesn't want to leave money on the table that they don't have to. It's no surprise that the leak would suggest they're matching Apple's numbers without beating them. Nor is the number they both picked particularly surprising, given that it's a simple halving of the previous rate.
You're assuming a conspiracy where none exists. Both of them are now providing better than the standard 30% rate that's the norm for the reta
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the standard 30% rate that's the norm for the retail industry
There was another "standard" 30% rate set by Apple and others...
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ebooks-idUSKCN0W91LQ ...what a short memory we have...
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The two situations are dissimilar in all the ways that matter. Agency pricing, which is what we're talking about here, is both legal and in widespread use across a variety of industries. There's nothing illegal about it whatsoever. Moreover, the reporter for your article got some fundamental facts regarding the case blatantly wrong, which may also explain why incorrectly believe that case has any bearing here.
For instance, the article inaccurately described agency pricing as "preventing discounting", which
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I'll grant that it would raise some questions, but even if they talked, the suggestion of illegality would be a far stretch. I mean, what would they even be colluding on? Colluding to altruistically give back half their profits to developers? It makes no sense, and even if it happened, I doubt it would be any more illegal than competing companies agreeing to donate to the same charity.
Really, there's neither a need nor a benefit to colluding here. After all, doing what they did without colluding would poten
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I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that it is legal so long as there wasn't a colluding phone call where they agreed on 85%. Basically, the airlines do this and the courts have said, "meh."
Too little too late (Score:5, Interesting)
I already shuttered my shop and got rid of both my people. I just don't want a business partner like Google or Apple that dictates what I can sell in the marketplace to the point where I have no freedom of expression. They also are fond of reaching deep into the pockets of those that keep them in business.
Re:Too little too late (Score:5, Informative)
Well, with Apple you have a point, but less so with Google. With Apple you HAVE to go through the app store or you have no way of getting on their products. With Google though, if you don't like their app store terms, you can always sell the app as a sideload app. Sure, it's not as nice, but then again if you aren't going to let Google have their cut via the app store what do you expect. The key is though, you have an option to completely avoid Google's app store and still get your app on their products.
Same option with Apple (Score:3)
With iOS, you can build any app and sell it through Cydia to any jailbroken iPhone.
You will actually have a much larger potential market than a side loaded Android app would, because all jail-breakers use Cydia. Most Android owners will never find, much less load, your side loaded Android app.
The world will certainly notice your protest. (Score:3)
unless we get distracted by someth
85% of fuck all (Score:3, Insightful)
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Speak for yourself, knobcheese. I wouldn't pay a cent for an Apple app because it's made deliberately hard to obtain apps from other places, while Google makes it convenient for me to install apps how I want, so I'm happy to pay for useful software even when I could easily get away with not doing so.
Same for MP3s, movies, and just about all digital content: the easier you make life for me, the more I'm inclined to pay. Making it harder for me to avoid payment will just make me try harder not to pay.
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Google does not make convenient to install app how you want. I have used apple, android and windows phone (each for more than a year). The issue with android was that there was no way to remove permission for an app. So if the app says it needs permission to dial, you had only two choice. Give permission or don't install app. This was fixed in android 6 which is released only few months ago.
With Apple, I had this control all the time. This was the reason why I switched over to iphone 6 from my nexus 5 in 20
do we have a sense of humor today? (Score:2)
There goes Android copying Apple again.
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Totally not copying. I'm sure they had this in the works for months, and it's just unfortunate timing that the day they planned to announce this was exactly one day after Apple happened to make the exact same announcement.
In all seriousness, this isn't exactly rocket science. Just like companies lower the prices of their products every so often to compete, and then other companies lower theirs in response, it's been obvious since Day 1 that *someone* would eventually offer better than 70-30. I'm only surpri
85% is good, but it's 85% of zilch (Score:2)
In other words, not enough for anyone to live on.
Certainly not those used to a regular developer's salary.
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Of course, most downloaded is not most profitable.