A new day also means a new story Elon Musk think. With the mogul now in the spotlight after buying Twitter for $44 billion, any claim he makes is exaggerated, even if it has nothing to do with the social network. For the occasion, Musk took advantage of the space to charge the 30% commission that Apple applies to the App Store.
In a tweet sharing how PayPal helped structure the European Union antitrust case against Apple Pay, Elon Musk called the 30% App Store commission “wrong”..
“The Apple Store is like a 30 percent internet tax. This is definitely wrong. It is literally 10 times higher than it should be.”
What does Elon Musk mean?
Apple charges 30% to developers who sell their apps on the App Store.. For example, if you offer a game for $10, the people of Cupertino will receive $3 and you will keep the rest. The same percentage applies when apps offer subscriptions or other types of sales that involve micropayments.
Why does Apple charge this fee? First, because they provide space on a platform that is independent of the developer to maintain. On the other hand, Apple sees its presence in the App Store as a good opportunity to generate income. In addition, we must not forget that the company offers a set of free tools for application development.
Now the App Store fee controversy, which has been in the spotlight for several years, has to do with the percentage that Apple withholds. A good part of the developers believe that “Apple Tax” is higher than it should be., as Elon Musk points out. Most don’t want the commission to go to zero, but reduce it to a more fair proportion – realizing that everyone has their own idea of ”fairness” based on their needs.
Elon on the side of Epic Games
Elon Musk is not the first to blame the App Store commission. In fact, there are companies that have been in legal battles against Apple over this. The loudest case without a doubt epic games.
In August 2020, Epic Games announced that players fortnite they could buy virtual currencies (paVos) and other digital goods on the iOS app. The problem is that the company has implemented its own payment system to avoid Apple’s fees, which is completely prohibited in the App Store. Within hours of the announcement, those in Cupertino blocked the game. Until the date fortnite not returned to the App Storeand.
However, the above was only the beginning of Epic Games’ complex and elaborate strategy to sue Apple for alleged monopolistic practices. It should be noted that Epic also went up against Google in the same situation – the Play Store also charges a commission – which forced them to fight on two fronts.
In September last year, the US authorities determined that Apple is not a monopoly. However, they ruled that the company should allow certain apps to add links to external websites to make payments. This is the verdict that companies like Netflix or Spotify have been waiting for years to avoid the 30 percent commission.
Of course, we still cannot say that the confrontation is over, since both companies have made appeals that have not yet been resolved.
In mid-2021, Elon Musk had words for a legal conflict between Apple and Epic Games. As you can imagine, he did not hesitate to show his support for the second. “Apple App Store fees are the de facto global tax on the Internet. Epic is right”— commented on Twitter, which received more than 220 thousand likes.
It will be interesting to see if Elon Musk intends to counter Apple and its mandate with more forceful action than a tweet. If he finally gets full control of Twitter, don’t be surprised if he does…
Source: Hiper Textual
