In-depth look at the iOS App Store and the potentially anti-competitive ways it restricts consumers and third-parties, an increasing area of regulatory scrutiny
@WillOremus in @ozm https://onezero.medium.com/... OneZero / @ozm : In 2018, unwilling to continue paying the “Apple tax,” Netflix followed Spotify and Amazon's Kindle books app in pulling in-app purchases from its iOS app. Smaller app developers, meanwhile, have little choice but to play by Apple's rules. http://read.medium.com/HjVBarY OneZero / @ozm : With some exceptions, Apple doesn't let users pay app makers directly. They can only pay Apple, which takes a cut of all revenue. To tighten its grip, Apple prohibits the affected apps from even telling users how they can pay their creators directly. http://read.medium.com/HjVBarY Siobhan O'Connor / @siobhannyc : Apple is not doing users any favors with its kafkaesque app store, and companies are paying through the nose. The latest from @WillOremus. https://onezero.medium.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : Apple now faces antitrust charges or investigations in at least six different venues. Something's going to have to give soon. I talked with the EFF's @mitchstoltz, Public Knowledge's @bergmayer, Basecamp's @dhh and others about what exactly that might be. https://onezero.medium.com/... https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : Apple points to the success of third-party apps to prove it isn't a monopoly. But those apps compete on Apple's terms, can be sold only in Apple's store, & when Apple makes a rival app that becomes the default, can't be deleted, and has deep access to the OS, well... good luck! https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : A growing cadre of app developers, antitrust experts, and consumers are making the case that iOS is a market in itself—one that commands almost 4 hours a day for 900 million people, and is worth $58B a year and growing. And Apple controls it unilaterally. https://onezero.medium.com/... https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : When we think of tech monopolies, we don't tend to think of Apple first. That's partly because it has slightly less than 50% market share in smartphones/mobile OS, and partly because it hasn't broken democracy or destroyed local retail. But... Will Oremus / @willoremus : I wrote about exactly how Apple is a monopoly, why it matters, and what can realistically be done about it. https://onezero.medium.com/... Damon Beres / @dlberes : .@WillOremus' exhaustive look at the antitrust issues in Apple's tightly controlled iOS ecosystem is a must-read if you own an iPhone... or just worry about corporate overreach, as a general rule https://onezero.medium.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
OneZero's deep dive lands at the start of a multi-year arc: it documents the App Store's two core restrictions — the mandatory commission on in-app payments and the ban on apps even telling users how to pay creators directly — and the escape hatch big players have used. Netflix's removal of in-app purchases from its iOS app, following Spotify and Amazon's Kindle app before it, shows what scale buys: the ability to route subscribers to the web. Smaller developers, as the piece notes, have no equivalent leverage.
The scrutiny the article flags has since materialized on multiple fronts: Tim Cook's appearance before US lawmakers defending the App Store's developer record, Apple hiring economists to argue its commissions aren't anticompetitive, and eventually the DOJ's antitrust case against Apple — with Matthew Ball arguing regulators could remedy the problem by forcing competition in app distribution and payments.
First-order effects
- Large subscription apps like Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon's Kindle app avoid Apple's commission by pulling in-app purchases and steering users to pay on the web, while smaller developers keep paying the cut because they can't move their audience off iOS.
Second-order effects
- Apple is building a defense-in-depth response: hired economists to argue the commissions are pro-competitive and executive testimony framing the App Store as having 'opened the gate wider' — while separately, its ad-tracking limits could push developers toward paid apps and subscriptions that flow back through its own payment system.
Third-order effects
- If regulators force competition in app distribution and payments on iOS, the App Store's commission stops being a structural given and becomes a negotiated take rate — and the 'Apple tax' question expands from app payments to whether Apple's default apps and OS-level access advantages constitute a broader antitrust problem.
The trend: App store gatekeeping is shifting from unilateral platform control toward regulated platform economics, with Apple's commission model as the test case across jurisdictions.