In this weeks Technology news Facebook Joins The Fray Against Apple. Recently multiple corporations including Microsoft and Epic games have gone against Apple due to their fees on the App Store. These companies have called out Apple on their App store fee policy, where Apple takes a 30% cut on any transactions made in app.
The $2 Trillion Tech Company
The market valuation of Apple is almost 2 trillion, making them the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. With the App Store creating them $50 billion in 2019 alone.
Many Companies including Epic Games, take issue with this as they believe the 30% cut is too high and are asking Apple to lower the amount.
Facebook Launch a new Feature for Live Events in response to COVID-19
In response to COVID-19 Facebook is launching a new feature in its events service where page owners are able to host online paid events to the customers In a bit to offset the losses they have made during the pandemic.
This is a free service that Facebook are offering their users, so they will not be taking any percentage from payments made. However, if any of these transactions take place on any IOS devices then apple will be taking their 30%.
As a result, Facebook Plans to add the message “Apple takes 30% of this purchase” to any online event taking purchases on iOS
Fidji Simo, the head of Facebook’s main app, says “With this case, in particular, we think it’s really important to be transparent when people are supporting small businesses where their money is going,” continues Simo
Apple didnt take to this very well and blocked the update on the grounds of The app violating the terms of service by showing irrelevant information to the users
“We asked Apple to reduce its 30% App Store tax or allow us to offer Facebook Pay so we could absorb all costs for businesses struggling during COVID-19. Unfortunately, they dismissed both our requests and [small businesses] will only be paid 70% of their hard-earned revenue,” continues Simo
The Time is Now
If there was a time for Facebook to put pressure on Apple, it would be now joining Microsoft, Epic and multiple other companies. The fact that Apple blocked the Facebook app update on the grounds of irrelevant information is ridiculous, that information is very relevant!
If I wanted to join some small business’ Facebook event, and decided to pay $10, I would want to know if the whole amount was going to them or not. If i knew paying for it on iOS, there would be a 30% cut, I’d rather make the purchase on another platform so they would get the full amount.
Apple knows, that’s why they blocked the update! This is very unethical and proves more so than ever that these huge corporations care nothing for the smaller guys.
This includes you to Facebook Microsoft and Google, but for today the shots I’ve been taking at Apple
This debacle with Facebook is nothing new, Apple have done this before in the past to apps that tried to explain their policies to iOS users in previous tech news, namely Netflix, kindle and Spotify.
A few months a go when i wanted to sign up to the Spotify service on my iPhone, i was not given the option, instead i was asked to go to the website to upgrade to their premium service.
I couldn’t understand why.
now i do…
In Conclusion
This seems like the perfect storm and the more Apple comes against the bigger companies like Facebook and Microsoft the more these draconian app store practices will come to light to the consumers.
Now let’s not get this mistaken I love the iPhone, been using it ever since the first generation, and I can’t see myself moving onto another ecosystem, unless Apple really mess up.
But Apple need to ge their act together and start easing their app store policies especially in the ways of the percentage they take off purchases. 30% is an extra ordinary amount, which make a huge difference to small time developers just trying to make ends meet.