
App makers sue Apple and claim it uses ‘monopoly power’ to charge fees - chj
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/05/app-makers-sue-apple-and-claim-it-uses-monopoly-power-to-charge-fees.html
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abduhl
This is most likely a direct result of the recent Supreme Court decision in
Apple v Pepper where the Supreme Court upheld the Ninth's decision that app
buyers could sue Apple for price inflation.

One of Apple's arguments in that case was that Apple couldn't be sued by app
purchasers because they could be sued by app developers. Think of it sort of
as Apple claiming a sort of "Double Jeopardy" defense. The Supreme Court wrote
that this argument was not persuasive:

 _It is true that Apple’s alleged anticompetitive conduct may leave Apple
subject to multiple suits by different plaintiffs. But Illinois Brick did not
purport to bar multiple liability that is unrelated to passing an overcharge
down a chain of distribution. Basic antitrust law tells us that the “mere fact
that an antitrust violation produces two different classes of victims hardly
entails that their injuries are duplicative of one another.” 2A Areeda &
Hovenkamp ¶339d, at 136. Multiple suits are not atypical when the intermediary
in a distribution chain is a bottleneck monopolist or monopsonist (or both)
between the manufacturer on the one end and the consumer on the other end. A
retailer who is both a monopolist and a monopsonist may be liable to different
classes of plaintiffs—both to downstream consumers and to upstream
suppliers—when the retailer’s unlawful conduct affects both the downstream and
upstream markets._

This new lawsuit appears to be app developers taking that quote to heart.

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jammygit
Also the “time to play fair” Spotify campaign may have inspired some people

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k__
Should have poured their time into making the web a viable alternative to
native. Well, let's see what the next 10 years of mobile bring...

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panpanna
I think we have two very different situations.

Small app developers who use apple infrastructure to reach millions of people
should not complain about the fees.

On the other hand, companies with own infrastructure should not have to pay
apple 30% for doing very little. The article mentions Spotify and I am 100%
behind Spotify/Amazon/Netflix/... on this.

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zepto
If you understood how much development has gone into the App Store and
delivery infrastructure, you’d realize it wasn’t ‘very little’.

Those large suppliers who use the App Store to market their products are also
capturing an outsize amount of the profit.

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joezydeco
Wouldn't it be interesting if Apple offered some kind of compromise and made
it more like a warehousing scheme?

"Okay, instead of 30% we will take 0%. In return, you owe us $x/month to store
your app on our servers and CDNs, then $y per download to deliver it onto the
phone. And $z per query to show up in the search engine.

And we'll need $10,000 up front on deposit to make sure you don't skate on the
bill."

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zepto
There is a lot more than a CDN and a stored download.

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joezydeco
Being abstract here, but you get the idea.

"We'll also need $50/hour to review the app...no upper bound on the time..."

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panpanna
That would not be fair either.

Remember the time apple placed Spotify app on review-limbo for months when
they were to announce Apple music?

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joezydeco
That's the root philosophical argument of this whole thing, which we will be
arguing about with bad metaphors and mismatched analogies for the next 2-3
years by my estimates.

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mcphage
You think we'll stop doing that in 2-3 years?

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joezydeco
Not at all. =) Just talking about the Apple app store class action suit
specifically.

I think HN's servers are powered by bad analogies.

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zepto
Why don’t they just develop for Android then?

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panpanna
You realize apps like Spotify and Netflix need to be on ALL platforms.

For the same reason Apple Music is available on Android.

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username444
But they don't, really. They just need to work in the browser.

I uninstalled Spotify long ago and just run the browser player now. It's more
limited functionality, but that's Spotify's fault.

Can we please stop assuming we need native app support for everything?

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panpanna
IMO Spotify is one of the few apps which should be native :)

(better background operation, lower memory usage, less battery drain)

