Apple will reduce its App Store cut to 15% from any developer who earns less than $1M in revenue per year from all their apps, starting January 1
but there's a catch Firstpost Tech : Apple to cut App Store commission from 30 to 15 percent for developers with up to $1 million annual revenue Stephen Warwick / iMore : Fury as Tim Sweeney compares Epic vs Apple to civil rights movement The Information : Apple's Tax Cut: The Information's Tech Briefing Mason Sansonia / Game Rant : Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Catches Fire For Comparing Apple Dispute to Civil Rights Movement PYMNTS.com : Apple Commission Cut Shows App Store Worries Josh Centers / TidBITS : Apple Drops App Store Commission to 15% for Small Developers Tae Kim / Bloomberg : Apple's Big App Store Price Cut Isn't Nearly Enough Hannah Juley / FastSpring : Epic Games Versus The App Store: A Fight for Autonomy and Freedom in the Ecommerce Era Rachel Sandler / Forbes : Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney Compares Fortnite Dispute With Apple To Civil Rights Movement Oliver Haslam / Redmond Pie : Apple Drops App Store Fee From 30% To 15% For Developers Making Less Than $1 Million Per Year Andy Chalk / PC Gamer : Tim Sweeney criticized for invoking the civil rights movement in Epic's fight with Apple Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat : Apple cuts commissions: Industry reacts, regulators watch Sami / Apple Terminal : A new, and improved Apple Inc. has been born John Gruber / Daring Fireball : App Store Small Business Program Will Reduce Commission to 15 Percent for Developers Earning up to $1 Million Per Year Mike Peterson / AppleInsider : App Store fee program will have ‘immaterial’ effect on Apple, says Morgan Stanley Tweets: @dhh : Machiavelli would be so proud of Apple. Trying to split the App Store opposition with conditional charity concessions, they - a $2T conglomerate - get to paint any developer making more than $1m as greedy, always wanting more. As clever as its sick. https://www.theverge.com/... Tom Warren / @tomwarren : Big Apple news. Apple is reducing its App Store cut to 15% for most app developers in January. This is a BIG deal for indie app developers that usually have to pay 30% on app revenues and in-app purchases. Details here: https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : Put another way: Apple is keeping its 30% commission on the roughly 2% of companies that generate 95% of its App Store revenues. https://www.nytimes.com/... @dhh : The only good thing about this cynical, Machiavellian ploy by Apple to split developers with selective handouts, is that it shows they're sweating. Even if just a little. But enough to twist Cook into the role of an awful lobbyist, constantly singing his own monopoly hymns. Gareth Simpson / @xurble : @marcoarment It doesn't seem to be 15% on your first $1,000,000. Doesn't that mean there's a perverse incentive to only ever make $999,999 ? Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : @tomwarren @dhh Since 95% of App Store revenue is from larger developers, consumer prices remain inflated by Apple's 30% tax on most digital purchases. Apple's pre-briefing of the press on the topic suggests that the financial impact of this change to Apple revenue is indeed immaterial. @dhh : Also, checkout the way Apple is treating journalists, in hope that this hollow move sails through without much critique 👀 https://twitter.com/... @dhh : And to frame that cut - $150,000!!! - as some sort of noble charity is really beyond the pale. Yes, it's better than the even more obscene $300,000 it used to cost to process $1m, but that's like saying it's better to have your arm cut off than your hand. Yeah, sure, but?! @dhh : What continues to be so perverse about Apple's stance that they're entitled to an exclusive hold on all payment processing via the App Store is they - of course!! - allow transactions on the web without it. Using Safari. On an iPhone. This isn't about security. It's about money. Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith : Whether this move affects looming antitrust regulation, I doubt it — Apple could just as easily return to 30% tomorrow, or 50%, or 80%, and nothing would be there to stop them. That's why regulators want to regulate Gene Munster / @munster_gene : Apple surprised me with their move to lower App Store commissions for smaller developers to 15% from 30%. This is a smart approach given Apple gives up less than 1% of revenue and will likely hold the 30% line with Epic and other large app developers. Long term win for Apple. Sebastiaan de With / @sdw : Ah yes, they held developers hostage to criticize the new plan that pays them way more money with a totally industry standard news embargo. Whatever evil plan will Apple think of next. https://twitter.com/... Francisco Tolmasky / @tolmasky : This is *crazy*. I would take my app down from the @AppStore if I was close to hitting $1M around November or so and wait until the next year to put it back up. If this is true, then Apple took the common misunderstanding of how tax brackets work and made that the rule. https://twitter.com/... Brianna Wu / @briannawu : In Mississippi, the fight for civil rights included a sheriff connected to the KKK executing three people with his service revolver for organizing a voter registry. Two were Jewish and one was black. I respect Tim Sweeney, but this an obscene analogy. https://techcrunch.com/... Rami Ismail / @tha_rami : Is this some cynical response to Epic vs Apple? Who knows! Is it absurd you have to apply? Absolutely. Will the terms be fair? No idea. Is it global? It better be. But developers getting 85% instead of 70% will make a difference in new studios around the world surviving or not. David Bernat / @davidbernat : @marcoarment Please tell me this will be applied progressively. Woe to the small developer who makes their million-and-oneth dollar and suddenly owes another 150k. Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : @3Plantey2 @Trix32x @9to5mac @benlovejoy Epic offered to put 30% of the revenue from Epic direct payments into escrow to be given to Apple if we lose the antitrust case. Apple refused. Harshada Sawant / @aeharshada : Apple 1 - Google ?....well hmm https://twitter.com/... Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : @3Plantey2 @9to5mac @benlovejoy Apple said they would treat all developers equally, but all along they've been gerrymandering companies into special deal categories, first in cutting Amazon a special 15% deal, and now a special deal for indies. Should we expect dozens of “tax brackets” in the future? Louie Mantia, Jr / @mantia : Which is a shame! There are so many valid App Store complaints that Apple has ignored for years, and they just quite literally bought themselves some more time by saying “well, we're already extremely rich so we can afford to just pay you a little bit more so you shut up.” Louie Mantia, Jr / @mantia : I think the Fortnite situation inspired a lot of developers to be louder about App Store issues. But this change in policy doesn't affect Fortnite at all. So everyone who qualifies for this 15% cut no longer are in the same bucket as Fortnite, and complaints will likely diminish. David Barnard / @drbarnard : Take SensorTower's data with a huge grain of salt. But if their estimate is 5%, it's probably <10%. (From what I've seen they do a terrible job estimating revenue for the top 1% and bottom 50%. @AppAnnie is historically better at these estimates, curious to see if they chime in.) https://twitter.com/... James Wang / @jwangark : Good move Apple. I would have made it 5%. But that's why I'm not CEO. https://twitter.com/... TechLinked / @techlinkedyt : “isn't it great we just decided to do this for no reason!!” https://www.theverge.com/... @dhh : Quote from Cook is beyond cynical. Written in that faux-care style so beloved by lobbyists. Apple is making smaller app developers growl before Apple (this program isn't even automatic!), such that the abusive tax on payment processing is lowered from 10x to 5x the market rate. https://twitter.com/... Rene Ritchie / @reneritchie : My twitter feed today: 1. Huge diversity of indie devs weighing/liking the reduction of App Store cut to 15% for under $1 million in revenue. 2. The same, few, monoculture, incredibly privileged founders screaming victimy as though Apple is pulling their brains out their noses. https://twitter.com/... Will Strafach / @chronic : I wonder what incited Apple's % reduction. any progress is always good news, but this feels rushed and ambiguous. Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith : In broader terms, Apple is setting up its unified App Store platform for the next decade. iOS apps on Mac, Universal Purchase, dropping fees to 15% for most developers — Apple now has hindsight, scale, and a vast hoard of money to help it model the next generation of App Store Federico Viticci / @viticci : Huge App Store news: Apple is reducing commissions to 15% for developers who earned less than $1 million in a year. This is called the App Store Small Business Program, and it starts January 1, 2021. We have all the details here: https://www.macstories.net/... https://twitter.com/... Tim Bradshaw / @tim : What could possibly have prompted this sudden bout of generosity? 🤔 Suggests to me that Apple is anticipating more antitrust attention. https://twitter.com/... @gregbensinger : Sucks for that developer making $1.1M on an app https://www.nytimes.com/... Mike Novogratz / @novogratz : Trying to get ahead of the Biden administration. https://twitter.com/... Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith : Apple reducing its commission to 15% will make a huge difference to small businesses and developers like me, and could have ripple effects across the industry and across other platforms. It's a gesture of goodwill that arguably could have come sooner, this year being what it was Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith : Definitely an element among the developer base that doesn't realize that Apple's changing the rate to 15% precisely because of the fallout of the Epic, Hey cases and pressure from antitrust regulators. Without last months of coverage, I have no doubt we'd be facing 30% in January Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : Apple will reduce App Store cut to 15 percent for most deva https://www.theverge.com/... // Most of the time the high volume customers get the discount. This is the weird inversion that looming regulation can cause. Same happened to Windows. Nick Statt / @nickstatt : Epic's @TimSweeneyEpic and Spotify, as well as fierce Apple critic @dhh, don't have kind words about Apple's new App Store fee cut, which they say only bolsters the argument the iOS platform is an uneven playing field. https://www.theverge.com/... Benjamin Mayo / @bzamayo : Absolutely massive change to App Store policy: rate cut to 15% for all developers that make less than $1million per year. https://9to5mac.com/... Sameer.Nigam / @_sameernigam : Such an amazingly vacuous PR stunt! 95% of @AppStore revenue comes from the top 2% most popular apps. But this new discount applies only to the bottom 98% apps. So @Apple is basically giving up just ~2.5% of future revenues, but making it look like a 50% discount. 👏👏👏👏 https://twitter.com/... James Thomson / @jamesthomson : Worth pointing out that reducing Apple's cut from 30% to 15% actually increases _your_ revenue by 21.43%. Maths! Will Oremus / @willoremus : As I and many others have pointed out in the past, antitrust scrutiny alone can make a difference in companies' behavior, even before any enforcement action is taken. This is a great example: https://www.wsj.com/... M.G. Siegler / @mgsiegler : A good first step. But it still needs to be more granular. $1M cut off totally arbitrary, easy round number for them to pick which won't impact bottom line too much. Payment lock-in still bigger issue. They need to win by offering best service developers choose to use... https://twitter.com/... @anildash : This is a good concession from Apple, and kudos to the many developers who spoke up and pushed them to make changes. May your voices ever be as effective in shaping Apple policy as a Taylor Swift Tumblr post. https://twitter.com/... Marco Arment / @marcoarment : Yes. I'm not sure why they set it up this way, rather than like progressive taxation, but you now have a rational incentive to pull your app from the store after it makes $999,999 unless you're REALLY sure it's going to make at least $1,215,000 for this year AND next year. https://twitter.com/... Shaan Pruden / @shaanpruden : Great news for our indie developers. Hear from @kamibox_ph @hopscotch @MySwimPro https://www.apple.com/... Terence Eden / @edent : Blimey! Someone has finally broken the cartel! Now, if only they'd reduce the yearly licence fee so that non-profits could use Sign In With Apple. https://twitter.com/... Curtis Herbert / @parrots : Yusssss. So, uh, can y'all just take the rest of the year off from complaining about them now? I truly think they deserve it, adding this to the list of “things we shipped in 2020.” https://www.apple.com/... Ryan McLeod / @warpling : Ahhh I'm SO happy. Essentially got a 20% raise overnight 😭 https://www.apple.com/... Marco Arment / @marcoarment : Holy shit, they're giving us a raise?! NEVER saw this one coming. Not in a million years. Just stunned. Wow! https://www.apple.com/... Jacob Eiting / @jeiting : Siri, show me someone who's opinion on this would have been negative no matter what https://twitter.com/... Aral Balkan / @aral : I hope the irony of a two-trillion dollar corporation that doesn't pay its taxes implementing a tiered tax system is not lost on all of you. https://twitter.com/... Walt Mossberg / @waltmossberg : @Apple cuts its distribution fee for most app developers in half. The change applies to the vast majority of developers, who have annual revenue under $1 million. It won't likely mollify big players who are battling Apple over the fees, but it's a smart and fair move, IMO. https://twitter.com/... Mark Gurman / @markgurman : The caveat here: if you top $1M in a calendar year, you won't be eligible for the 15% for the entire following calendar year, even if you make under $1 million that new year. The 15% is based on your prior year's revenue. Dieter Bohn / @backlon : It's also a very big, open question whether or not this has any impact on Apple's own bottom line on App Store revenue. My guess, nah. Here's good context from @jacknicas https://twitter.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : It's quite a thing that Apple chose to make devs apply instead of just making it an across the board cut. I suspect that it's because it would be easy for people to game a $1 mil cap system with multiple accounts, so Apple just wants a more direct relationship Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Even though I don't think it solves the fundamental issues with the App Store, I still do think it's a step in the right direction and it is unambiguously good to allow smaller devs and businesses to keep more money. Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Also as Dr. Evil's flunkies will tell you, one million dollars ain't what it used to be. Split out the cost of a salary or two and the cost of actually running a business and even Apple's reduced 15% still feels like a big slice. That's 150k our of 1m. Better than 300k obviously https://twitter.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Devs who make less and $1 million per year can apply to get their app store fees reduced to 15%. This is a good move in the right direction, but underneath the feel-good number at the top are lots of provisos. https://www.theverge.com/... Mary Branscombe / @marypcbuk : I see Apple has innovatively invented copying the payment scale from the Microsoft Store but in an overly complicated way? Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Never change, Apple. Never change. “Apple said in a statement that it had made the change because 2020 was a difficult year for many small companies.” Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Apple: WE ARE RIGHT AND WE SHALL NEVER YIELD. Also Apple: Yeah, let's cut in half the app store fee for smaller developers. (To be clear, I think Apple is doing a smart thing here.) https://www.nytimes.com/... by @jacknicas (Deleted a prior tweet that tagged the wrong person.) Mustapha Hamoui / @beirutspring : If I were a developer making $1.8M per year on the app store, I now have a strong incentive to divide my company in two, each of which making $0.9M https://twitter.com/... Gavin Costello / @gavincostello : Correct. Apple's charges all appear under a single code on your credit card bill, and it's like trying to break into Fort Knox to find out where to find *all* your charges, clearly itemised, in one place https://twitter.com/... Suraj / @surajkrdubey : This is a great move. Hoping @GooglePlay to follow in the footsteps soon. https://twitter.com/... @dhh : But even if Apple actually did move their rates down - not as conditional charity for smaller developers to beg for, but across the board - we still wouldn't be done! The root of the issue is the monopoly claim that Apple must process all payments, own all customer relationships. Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : New: Facing antitrust scrutiny, Apple cut in half the commission it charges smaller app makers. Starting on Jan. 1, developers with less than $1 million in app sales the previous year will pay Apple 15% instead of 30%. https://www.nytimes.com/... Tom Warren / @tomwarren : lawsuits from Epic Games, pressure from app developers like @dhh, and regulators circling has forced Apple into this. As David points out, it's classic divide and rule from Apple. It also shows that Apple's argument about the rules being the same for everyone is pure bullshit https://twitter.com/... Dan Grabham / @dangrabham : This is cool for smaller app devs - Apple is chopping the App Store commission in half from Jan. 30 to 15 percent, includes existing devs. https://www.apple.com/... Sameer Singh / @sameer_singh17 : Interesting, but somewhat odd move. Smaller developers are more reliant on the app store than big brand ones who are still paying 30%. Appears largely aimed at regulators. https://twitter.com/... Anton Nekhaenko / @derloos : Two questions: 1. If your app makes $1,000,001 in a calendar year, do you get to pay 30% just on the $1 that's above the threshold, or on the entire amount? >>> Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Apple is cutting App Store fees to 15% for companies making less than $1M per year. This shows that despite their rhetoric, the Epic lawsuit has them shook. They are a trillion dollar company extracting monopoly rents from locking down their platform. https://www.theverge.com/... Vijay Shekhar Sharma / @vijayshekhar : This is such a win for small developers ! Great move by @Apple . https://twitter.com/... Benedict Evans / @benedictevans : Big concession from Apple on app store commission, but also interestingly tactical: fee goes to 15% for less than $1m/year. Helps small developers and startups, but not Spotify or Epic. And Apple has a strong case on Epic but an unwinnable case on Spotify. https://www.apple.com/... Daniel Ahmad / @zhugeex : It's a good move but it's aimed at small businesses that earn less than $1 million per year from all their apps. In other words, this is great for small developers, but doesn't change anything in the case of Fortnite for example or any other app / game that does well. https://twitter.com/... Benjamin Mayo / @bzamayo : Also curious that the timing of this announcement comes after WWDC and all the summer antitrust hearings. IMO Apple got a lot of bad press from appearing to capitalise on the pandemic by imposing 30% fees on small businesses that went virtual, and that helped motivate this. Benjamin Mayo / @bzamayo : In the press release, Apple refers to the 30% rate as the “standard commission”. But it's hardly standard these days? I mean most apps don't gross a million, video streaming apps have their own 15% program ... the people paying 30% are mainly In-App Purchase powered games. See also Mediagazer