Apple Must Halt Non-App Store Sales Commissions, Judge Says (yahoo.com) 40
Apple violated a court order requiring it to open up the App Store to third-party payment options and must stop charging commissions on purchases outside its software marketplace, a federal judge said in a blistering ruling that referred the company to prosecutors for a possible criminal probe. From a report: U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers sided Wednesday with "Fortnite" maker Epic Games over its allegation that the iPhone maker failed to comply with an order she issued in 2021 after finding the company engaged in anticompetitive conduct in violation of California law.
Gonzalez Rogers also referred the case to federal prosecutors to investigate whether Apple committed criminal contempt of court for flouting her 2021 ruling. The U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco declined to comment. The changes the company must now make could put a sizable dent in the double-digit billions of dollars in revenue the App Store generates each year. The judge's order [PDF]: Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court's Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.
It Is So Ordered.
Gonzalez Rogers also referred the case to federal prosecutors to investigate whether Apple committed criminal contempt of court for flouting her 2021 ruling. The U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco declined to comment. The changes the company must now make could put a sizable dent in the double-digit billions of dollars in revenue the App Store generates each year. The judge's order [PDF]: Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court's Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.
It Is So Ordered.
A crypto bribe will fix all this I'm sure. (Score:3)
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Apple is really in a league of its own when it comes to anticompetitive behavior, EU or not.
Why do I say that? Well, remember, Microsoft got into trouble for bundling internet explorer with Windows. Apple has been actively banning competing browsers on iDevices. Microsoft got into trouble for trying to break code abstractions (namely, java) that enabled broader application compatibility with other OSes. Until last year, Apple had all but banned that on iDevices, even banning emulators.
Only it gets worse. Yo
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It seems to me Apple's calculations worked out pretty well. The order was issued in 2021. They managed to keep the revenue coming for an extra four years. That's a huge win by defying the court.
Maybe the government will now press charges against them. Or maybe not. Given the people running the DOJ right now, I suspect they'll manage to get out of it with a few politically appropriate moves that don't really hurt them much. If the government does press charges, they can probably drag it on for years mo
Re:Why is Microsoft not anti-competitive? (Score:4, Informative)
They are no different than XBOX apart from the form factor.
The fundamental problem with Apple is that if you want to make a mobile app, you have no choice but deal with Apple. If you want to make a game you have many different options, but for making a mobile App you realistically would be cutting yourself out of the market if you chose to for instance only work on Android.
This puts higher responsibility on Apple to ensure that they do fair market practices.
Why is Microsoft not anti-competitive?
Feel free to file a lawsuit if you feel damaged by Microsoft's practices. Apple being found guilty of something is not in any way an all-clear for Microsoft to keep doing what they are doing.
Microsoft has a monopoly over Xbox
That's like saying your grocery store has a monopoly over a grocery store. Saying it like this is a fundamental misunderstanding of why apple has market power.
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Bullshit. Android has about 70% of the worldwide market share for cell phones.
>>Microsoft has a monopoly over Xbox
>That's like saying your grocery store has a monopoly over a grocery store.
No, it's like saying Apple has a monopoly over iPhones. Or that GM has one over Chevrolets. But GM doesn't have a monopoly over vehicles, and Apple doesn't have a mono
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What does the world market share matter in California?
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What does the world market share matter in California?
What does California market share matter to the world? Imagine if companies had to bend to conflicting rulings of hundreds of different courts from different jurisdictions.
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Umm... they do, if they want to do business in those jurisdictions. Those jurisdictions are called "countries."
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Bullshit. Android has about 70% of the worldwide market share for cell phones.
That doesn't matter. See United States v. Microsoft.
What matters is the relevant market, and your ability to transition between them.
If the court finds that the barriers for switching between iPhones and Android phones is high enough, they count as separate markets.
This is what fucked Microsoft, in spite of them having nowhere near a monopoly.
I find it humorous that the hens have come home to roost, and I'm typing this on an $8,000 Apple laptop.
Re: Why is Microsoft not anti-competitive? (Score:2)
Walk into a given office. What do you see? MS Office and Windows. On top of that, Microsoft makes it hard for companies using it's products to transition to alternatives through being in subtly incompatible in painful ways.
This is HIGHLY anti-competitive behavior by Microsoft
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And i'm not sure "cell phones" is even the right category here since we're talking Epic and Fortnite specifically: Portable gaming consoles like Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, Nvidia Shield, Asus ROG Ally ... have been on the scene for several years now.
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Why are you so emotional about this?
There are no large app makers in the US that can avoid selling on Apple. For larger app developers, the percentage that works with apple is 100%. 100% market share. But it doesn't even matter because the exact percentage doesn't matter and you could easily have market power in a legal sense when owning 30% of some entire market.
I don’t think 'Epic can just sell their stuff in India so that
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Android is not a company. And US law applies mainly to the US, where apple has 55% of the phone market, and 75% of all mobile aps sold are sold in apple's store. Apple has a monopoly on mobile app distribution, which is the subject of this court case. And since you can't transfer apps from ios to android, a court could easily find that apple has a 100% monopoly on iphone app distribution.
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Imagine that if in the beginning, Microsoft required any software that would run on a Windows machine must have been purchased through them. That for every single purchase on a Windows machine, a cut went to Bill Gates on top of what you paid to actually buy Windows. That would have never been allowed. But, over time, governments have capitulated to big corporate interests, whose sole mission is to extract as much profit out of the consumer (or other businesses) as much as possible.
Your argument that it "se
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That's false. There's nothing anti-competitive or illegal about requiring software on your platform to be purchased through you. The fundamental issue here is that you cannot dictate that you collect a fee for things that happen *outside* your platform. That's what Apple is in trouble for here. Their insistence not that someone purchases your software through their store, but rather their insistence that they are owed a fee if someone pays you money *outside* their store, e.g. by filling in credit card deta
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There's nothing anti-competitive or illegal about requiring software on your platform to be purchased through you.
It's definitely anti-competitive. It reduces competition.
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No. Thats a bad analogy.
Steam charges its 30% for things you buy on the steam store.
This would be like Microsoft ALSO charging 30% for things you buy on the steam store just because you want to run it on windows. This penalty is for Apple charging a commission on things NOT purchased on the app store.
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Comparing AWS to any of the major App stores is asinine. AWS is a platform for you to use. App stores are a platform for you to reach customers. Microsoft also charge 30% commission on the Xbox titles - again they provide customers, not just a software platform.
Re:Why is Microsoft not anti-competitive? (Score:4, Informative)
You missed the single most important point: Apple takes commission over *NON-APP STORE* sales. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and even Google do not.
Microsoft do not force anyone to use their sales method and do not collect rent on other people's infrastructure. They only charge a commission on what they do through their store - and they don't mandate the store use.
Re: Why is Microsoft not anti-competitive? (Score:2)
The Xbox isn't a general purpose computer.
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The Xbox isn't a general purpose computer.
Also, and more importantly, the Xbox isn't a monopoly or even in a dominant market position. Hell, it's currently 3rd behind Nintendo and Sony... that's if we're not including PC gaming (which we all know is superior). The fact that none of them can really claim to be dominant in the market shows that competition in this instance is working.
Also MS has previously been in trouble for abusing it's market position and has learned to stay (just) on the right side of the law. If MS needs an anti-trust investi
Re: Why is Microsoft not anti-competitive? (Score:2)
Neither is an iPhone.
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"How is that any different? Microsoft takes commission off of every sale, why can't Apple take?"
So go sue Microsoft. This is a result of a specific court order. It applies to the parties, not unrelated companies that you don't like.
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No they don't. Right out the gate, you are wrong.
I can buy Xbox games from Walmart, BestBuy, Amazon, GameStop, etc... And Microsoft doesn't get a percentage of that sale. This allows choice and price differences in the Xbox market, as the store selling the game box can set their own price. If a store sells an Xbox game for $40 or $400, they don't have to give Microsoft a percentage of the sale. These aren't the same thing, not matter how h
See the damning screenshots in the ruling. (Score:5, Informative)
See pages 32-36 of the ruling for the smoking guns -- screenshots of the alternatives that Apple considered.
https://storage.courtlistener.... [courtlistener.com]
BTW, the judge was appointed to several judgeships by both Rep and Dem politicians.
And confirmed by the US Senate 89–6.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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nah, this must be someone the EU parachuted to screw over US tech.
Standard Apple behaviour (Score:4, Interesting)
Somehow they keep hiring lawyers and execs who think they are masters of the universe and can ignore judgements.
They are not trying to skirt it either, it's dumb petulance which gets them slapped harder and harder until they have to comply any way.
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At that level the lawyers will argue whatever they are paid to argue, no matter how ridiculous. For Apple the cost of litigation is tiny compared to the cost of allowing alternative ways to buy stuff on their platform, so they will explore every possible avenue to stop it, no matter how outlandish the legal theory behind it.
They do need to be slapped hard for this, because money is the only thing they seem to understand.
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Its 2025. You can ignore judges with impunity and suffer no repercussions.
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Its 2025. You can ignore judges with impunity and suffer no repercussions.
Only if you are "ruling class".
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You think Apple isn't part of the "ruling class"?
Watch how fast Tim Apple has a Mar-a-Lago lunch with a nice fat "donation".
Is Audible included (Score:2)
Hopefully this means I won't have to leave the Audible app and switch over to the web page to use my Audible credits for book purchases. I didn't have to do that on the Android app, I could just use the "buy with credit" button and start listening.