The big question here is why should Apple be entitled to any fee whatsoever if a user wants to buy something from a vendor without using Apple's payment infrastructure? Users should be free to transact directly with vendors without involving Apple if they don't want to involve Apple (which the court case approved) and if they aren't involving Apple, as in this case, a demand for a "commission" on non-Apple transactions is anticompetitive and should be prohibited by law.
The fight over alternative payment methods is fraught with misunderstandings. Apple has always stated their intention to collect the 30% regardless of what payment method you use, because as far as they're concerned it's not a payment processing fee. They view it as a platform fee that you pay for access to iOS, the App Store, and other services, and so far regulators and governments have agreed with them on that.
What's changed here is that Apple has now set a number to the "payment processing" portion of their fee. This gives them a way to cave on alternative payments while still retaining the bulk of their profits.
No, they are providing exclusive service because they own the platform. If competition was allowed their insane margins would go away. Microsoft got fined for IE and this is milking it way worse.
Not bothering would be the equivalent of the app store closing in this case, which would mean that iPhones would have to be open. So that would be the ideal outcome (except for Apple).
It's not 30%, but a very large portion of VISA's profits comes from the fees they charge; VISA's fees are not capped to their "costs" of operating. VISA exists as a literal precedent that you can profit off a commission for a financial transaction.
The issue in question isn't whether Apple should be allowed to profit, it's whether they should be allowed to abuse their effective monopoly position to set their commission a literal order of magnitude higher than any other processor.
In EU credit card fees are capped by law, and the duopoly is surviving just fine, just with less obscene profits. Should do the same with mobile app stores.
Apple has always argued that the 30% is not a payment processing fee. It's the App Store fee, which until today has bundled their payment processing fee with fees to cover their other expenses (and make them a tidy profit).
The argument over alternative payment methods has always struck me as odd for precisely this reason--throughout the Epic case Apple has made it clear that if they allowed alternative payment methods they would still charge the 30% fee for the other services.
Is 30% (or 27%) too steep for what the App Store provides? Probably. But fighting over the 30% as a payment processing fee is a huge misstep, because regulators will always take Apple's side on that question.
It’s rather tiresome for people to alternate between general and specific in order to be argumentative as opposed to staying on topic and contributing to the issue at hand.
No, the poster isn’t implying that all businesses should be capping their fees. That’s absurd. However, Apple is not all businesses and regulation is structured in a way that has a number of conditions. I for one am glad that the department of insurance makes my car insurance affordable and that when I purchase water it’s not from a private equity firm.
If so, then that implies no profit. If no profit, why bother?