Originally published at: EU Charges Apple with Antitrust Violations after Spotify Complaint - TidBITS
The European Union has charged Apple with antitrust violations related to a Spotify complaint about Apple’s 30% App Store commission and policies that prevent mentioning non-Apple payment mechanisms.
I wonder if Apple should just let devs like Spotify link from the app to their websites for external payment but then in turn charge Spotify $5 per downloaded Spotify app to cover for Apple’s distribution and dev tools costs that Spotify is no longer paying for otherwise.
Netflix and Amazon don’t sell from within their streaming app to avoid Apple’s cut. Spotify can do the same. What they cannot do is expect Apple to bear all the costs for their app distribution, dev tools, vetting, security, etc. and then expect to get all of that for just their annual $99 dev fee.
Looks like the judge in the Epic vs. Apple trial might be thinking along similar lines.
I’d totally be in favor of Apple being forced to let app developers at least talk about alternative payment methods, even if they can’t be linked in directly. As you suggest, Apple could even create a separate per-download fee to offset the lost revenue.
That might create an interesting decision for developers: take Apple’s 15% or 30% fee, or accept a per-download fee. Depending on price point, it might make more or less sense in different situations.