No, the ruling is that they have to pay the commission within 7 days of a subscription/payment occurring via a link in an app distributed on the app store.
There's no way around it. The only way around it is if the user naturally finds/discovers the link to subscribe to a service via another method outside of the app itself. If the act of subscribing happened via clicking a link in the app, the commission must be paid.
If they go to the browser themself - without clicking a link in the app - to subscribe, then no commission has to be paid. However, if they clicked a link from within the app itself to subscribe then they must pay the commission, even if the payment eventually happened from within a browser.
In other words, no matter how the subscription/payment happened, if it originated from within the app (whether via a link to an external site or via apples payment system) you must pay a commision.
It's not a store, though. It's a phone. People generally don't shop at establishments they already paid for. Even if they did, it wouldn't be an apt analogy because other stores can't sell that same item anyways.
So with that in mind, it's more like paying for an apartment where you have to order your groceries and furniture over Apple's room service. When other businesses want dial-out functionality, Apple taxes them 27% of the transaction to enter the building. When you offer to walk outside and help accept the delivery, Apple locks the doors on you and tells you to buy a second apartment. Enough people have bought these apartments (and like them) that they want to change the bad door policy but keep the posh interior. Now Apple wants to play the victim despite claiming an ample 40% profit margin every time someone buys a room.
I don't think that's a good analogy because in this scenario only one store can even exist in the first place.
Would you be okay with Apple taking 30% from food ordering app companies when making orders through an Iphone? Because it's basically the exact same thing they're doing here.
Right, if a user subscribes via app it uses Apple’s payment system and Apple is paying merchant processing fees, vs if they subscribe directly with Spotify they handle processing fees, chargebacks, support etc.
The ~30% was relatively reasonable when the App Store launched with most transactions being $0.99 one-time purchases, but isn’t very equitable for things like $15/mo subscriptions.
