Major U.S. News Publishers Join the Coalition for App Fairness Advocacy Group To Fight the 'Apple Tax' (techcrunch.com) 53
A group of major U.S. news publishers have joined the Coalition for App Fairness (CAF), the advocacy group pushing for increased regulation over app stores and fair treatment for all developers. The publisher trade association now joining CAF is Digital Content Next, a representative for the AP, The New York Times, NPR, ESPN, Vox, The Washington Post, Meredith, Bloomberg, NBCU, The Financial Times, and many others. The organization is now the 50th member for CAF and the first to represent the news and media business in the U.S. From a report: It joins other media organizations who are already CAF members, including the European Publishers Council, News Media Europe, GESTE, and Schibsted, as well as CAF founding members like Basecamp, Blix, Blockchain.com, Deezer, Epic Games, Match Group, Prepear, Protonmail, Skydemon, Spotify, and Tile, plus a growing number of smaller developers. DCN's members, combined, reach an audience over over 223 million unique visitors and 100% of the U.S. online population, it says. Its publishers provide access to content on a subscription-based model that, according to its statements, Apple "severely impacts" by serving as an intermediary.
The big boys now want their fees reduced too (Score:4, Interesting)
Android? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't all these whiners just switch to Android?
Re:Android? (Score:5, Funny)
Most of them are already on Android. Even with the lower fees they make more money on iOS. Go figure, I guess it's profitable having access to a user base that will drop a fortune on a smartphone every time a new one comes out. Who would have guessed that habitual spending behavior would be a valuable resource to cultivate.
Re:Android? (Score:4, Interesting)
... a user base that will drop a fortune on a smartphone every time a new one comes out.
Where the hell did that asinine factoid come from? Most iPhone users I've met use their phones up till they're either obsolete or get smashed up and skip generations as a matter of course. I've got an iPhone X and don't plan to replace it until they roll out the iPhone XIV at the earliest.
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The average selling price for new iPhones is nowhere near $400. For 2019 [wccftech.com] which included the introduction of the SE2, it's expected to be $753. The previous year (without an SE version), the average selling price was $793. So, the lower-price SE2 did make a difference, but not much.
Yes, there are many iPhone owners with older phones and used phones, but there are many tens of millions of people willing to pay a lot for a new iPhone every year. The reputation for iPhone buyers to be willing to spend lots
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The average selling price for new iPhones is nowhere near $400.
Stop putting words in his mouth. That's not what he said, he said Apple has a $400 smartphone in their lineup which is true if you have a trade in, if you don't th 64 Gb iPhone XR has a sim free price of $499 in the Apple store brand spanking new:
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy... [apple.com]
You can get the same gizmo on Amazon for $401.99 if you can live with it being refurbed:
https://www.amazon.com/Apple-i... [amazon.com]
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The average selling price for new iPhones is nowhere near $400.
Stop putting words in his mouth. That's not what he said, he said Apple has a $400 smartphone in their lineup
I never implied that he said that average selling price was near $400. I implied that the $400 phone was insignificant. It makes almost no difference in the set of phones that Apple sells. The numbers bear that out.
Back to the original point, the $400 is uncharacteristic of the typical iPhone buyer, as the typical buyer is willing to pay twice that amount.
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Apple has a $400 smartphone in their lineup which is true if you have a trade in, if you don't th 64 Gb iPhone XR has a sim free price of $499
I was actually referring to the iPhone SE, which can be bought new for $399 without trade-in.
Of course iOS users are more valuable (Score:4, Insightful)
iOS users are far more valuable because they are more affluent than the average Android user. So yes they spend more money.
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Dude, you think Apple sells 75 million iPhones per quarter to *new* users? iOS users are far more valuable because they are more affluent than the average Android user. So yes they spend more money.
The iPhone installed base was around 900 million devices in 2019 so if your statistic of 300 million sales per annum is true you've pretty much disproven the OP's asinine claim that every single Apple user buys a new phone every damn year. You'd have to be dumber than a wooden mallet to believe that anyway.
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OP's asinine claim that every single Apple user buys a new phone every damn year.
every single Apple user? *reviews OP* ... Nope, I never said that. Putting words in my mouth so you can debate them? You can save all of us the energy and talk to yourself in a mirror.
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OP's asinine claim that every single Apple user buys a new phone every damn year.
every single Apple user? *reviews OP* ... Nope, I never said that. Putting words in my mouth so you can debate them? You can save all of us the energy and talk to yourself in a mirror.
**Quotes your asinine OP**:
Yup, that's you generalising about the entire Apple user base that the entire Apple user base runs out and buys a new phone every time a new one comes out.
Re: Of course iOS users are more valuable (Score:2)
Grammatically, what he said was that they would get together and buy one phone. Which makes sense, given how much an iPhone costs.
Re: Android? (Score:2)
Totally anecdotal, but I see WAY more cracked iPhones in the wild than all makes of Android phone put together. I attribute this to cost. It's a whole lot cheaper to buy another Android phone than even to have an iPhone repaired in most circumstances.
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Maybe kids who love their phone and use it all the time drop it more frequently? While shitty Android users eventually grow tired of their phone, perhaps even feigning forgetfulness as an excuse to leave it safe at home. A bit of a stretch I suppose but plausible.
Something drives the sales of 200 million phones per year. With something like a 1.5 billion base of active devices that means either the same people are replacing their device every 7.5 years, or it is more complex than that (duh). Perhaps there i
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Maybe kids who love their phone and use it all the time drop it more frequently?
I see people of all ages with broken phones. It's not just kids who can't afford to replace a thousand dollar iToy.
While shitty Android users eventually grow tired of their phone, perhaps even feigning forgetfulness as an excuse to leave it safe at home. A bit of a stretch I suppose but plausible.
No, not even slightly plausible. Android phones do more than Apple phones, because you can have any kind of app you want.
I think for technical reasons the life of an Android device is probably shorter than an Apple device.
Nope. It's for vendor profit reasons. They COULD support the devices for longer, but they choose not to so that they can sell new models. Just like Apple COULD make new OS updates without slowing their old devices down to unusability, but they choose not to so that they can s
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Used 4S until last year and used 6+ now.
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Choice = "which oligopoly do you select to be abused by?"
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how is anyone being abused? If you do not like the terms simply do not make an app for the platform. Simply have a web browser based application. Or, create your own hardware platform and do your own thing.
Re:Android? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Make a jailbreak for it (Score:2)
Regulation (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, you can have app store regulation, with the following stipulations:
1. Apple will handle all billing, you just get a check
2. All personal information will be handled by Apple, NOT the developer
3. The developer will not be able to collect or harvest *any* personal information from the device
In exchange, the developer gets a larger percentage of subscription revenue. Sounds fair to me.
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1, 2, and 3 are current Apple store rules, so why would they cut their share in response to "agreeing" to those?
Not for subscription based apps. To use Waze on an iPhone, you need a Google account, that they then use to track everywhere you go.
Re:Regulation (Score:5, Informative)
And that's what the "Coalition for App Fairness" is really after.
Face it - Apple isn't giving them valuable customer data. It's never been about the 30% - there are so many workarounds (web apps, for example) that really, if it bothered them, it would be standard.
It's all about customer data, and Apple's made it impossible for publishers to get at it. The best they can get is a voluntary checkbox - check if you want to share your personal information with the publisher.
It's somewhat ironic because Epic Store does the same thing - they offer a checkbox to share your information with the developer, default unchecked, of course.
The fight has never been about the 30%. It can be 0% and they'd still bicker because Apple keeps the data to themselves. And they're forcing full disclosure of what data is collected.
The "Coalition for App Fairness" is more like "Coalition to Rape User Data". Huh, that makes a nice acronym for what they really mean.
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I talked to a friend about this who works for online news publisher. I asked if his publication was available through the Apple News app. He said that it was and showed me how to find their stuff on a secondary tab in the News app. It seemed to me that I would infrequently seek out their content on the secondary page.
When I asked how it was working for them from a business standpoint he said that Apple's restrictions on cookies were strong enough that they were lucky to get $100 in revenue from an articl
Let Them Fight! (Score:2)
Personally, major publishers aren't exactly the great saviors, but neither is Apple. I prefer to let them fight it out. Unfortunately I see lawyers making the profit and customers of Apple/major publishers footing the bill.
Shut the F Up (Score:2)
If you do not like the terms, simply do not make an app for Apple's platform. Wow, so simple.
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If you do not like the terms, simply do not make an app for Apple's platform. Wow, so simple.
Sure, don't go where the money is, go to the Google Play store where the tax is also 30 % but the profit per users is much lower than in the Apple store.
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At least on Android you are free to purchase software from outside the play store.
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> If you do not like the terms, simply do not make an app for Apple's platform. Wow, so simple
All the benefits of being a corporation but none of the controls, amirite?
Corporatists are the worst.
Oh, boo friggin' hoo (Score:2)
There was a time when a dating service had to pay money to an in-flight magazine to advertise. Now Match Group doesn't want to do that. Seriously? Pass the cost on to the customer. If their service is really all it's cracked up to be, their customers won't mind. Hell, they're going to spend a crapton in the eventual divorce.
Aren't most media avoiding the tax (Score:2)
Aren't most media avoiding the tax by handling payment themselves outside of the app store?
I thought their app was free but required a login (usually the same one you'd use on a PC web browser) to access some/most content.
Why are we defending Apple? (Score:1)
Why are we, the hoi polloi, defending Apple?
They are a trillion dollar enterprise. They charge an enormous sum for everything they make.
They are rent seeking for hosting an app that they do not curate, maintain, etc... They, literally, just allow it to have a presence in their store.
This is normal in brick n' mortar stores, because shelf space is limited. This is not acceptable in the current age. Especially not at the egregious 30%!!
Remember, The Times, et al, are not eating those costs, they're passing th
Nice that Apple is getting higher level pushback. (Score:2)
I'm not a big fan of Apple but (Score:2, Troll)
It's about ads and tracking (Score:1)
Oh noes, we can't track users anymore?!?! (Score:2)
It's like a shampoo company complaining it can't track the Walmart shoppers who bought their shampoo there. Get real.
12% (Score:2)
There's bound to be a Laffer Curve-like set of equations for app stores. At some point the passed-along Apple Tax increases pricing and therefore decreases demand.
Based on this maxim reappearing all over the economy in many different formulations, the maximum revenue is probably achieved somewhere between 10-15%. Do note, that's revenue for Apple.
Oh, and by the way, Epic Games is now the leader, not the pariah. Take node, all ye nattering nabobs of negativism.