Court docs: in a 2011 email Phil Schiller floated cutting Apple's 30% fee, provided it could still generate $1B in annual App Store profits when the fee was cut
Just over eight months after she signed up for Twitter, actor Kangana Ranaut … Malcolm Owen / AppleInsider : Apple's & Facebook tensions span a decade, reveals Epic ‘Fortnite’ trial emails Nick Statt / Protocol : The 70-30 revenue split is causing a reckoning in the game industry Rida Imran / iThinkDifferent : An email of Apple Fellow Phil Schiller shows he wanted to reduce App Store 30% fee in 2011 MacDailyNews : Steve Jobs called Facebook ‘Fecebook’ in newly revealed email Evan Selleck / iDownloadBlog.com : New documents show the rift between Apple and Facebook has spanned a decade Matt Wille / Input : Apple's long known its 30 percent App Store cut isn't sustainable Stephen Warwick / iMore : Steve Jobs once called Facebook ‘Fecebook’ in internal email Jon Porter / The Verge : Apple exec suggested cutting App Store commission to 20 percent as early as 2011 Sherif Saed / VG247 : The Epic Games vs. Apple trial opened with kids screaming ‘free Fortnite’ Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Philip Elmer‑DeWitt : Apple's docs attack the core of Epic's antitrust argument Alissa McAloon / Gamasutra : Epic paid devs nearly $12 million for 9 months of Epic Games Store free games Tyler Lee / Ubergizmo : Phil Schiller Once Suggested Apple Reduce Their App Store Fees Tweets: Patrick McGee / @patrickmcgee_ : @Apple @epic App Store Margins (Apple has disputed these) https://twitter.com/... @mattnavarra : In the emails, Steve Jobs calls Facebook, “Fecebooks” https://www.cnbc.com/... Mark Gurman / @markgurman : Apple's Phil Schiller floated reducing App Store cut in 2011 when the store reached $1b in annual profit. Apple didn't reduce commissions until end of 2020 for those generating below $1 million (aside from reduction to 15% in Year 2 of subscriptions). https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/... Steve Kovach / @stevekovach : “Fecebooks” — Steve Jobs, 2011 https://www.cnbc.com/... Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith : @jkingyens @markgurman ...so you're saying there's no competition? Almost like Apple's practices maneuvered it into a position where it was impossible to compete? Alistair Barr / @alistairmbarr : I thought Apple didn't track App Store profit?? https://twitter.com/... Jeff Kingyens / @jkingyens : @markgurman @stroughtonsmith “Someday we will see enough challenge...” Is this not proof that app store fees are driven by competitive forces? Apple isn't being monopolistic, they simply aren't being challenged. The real culprit? Google/Android. @patrickmoorhead : If these are wrong, then I'd love Apple to disclose what the margins are. More importantly, I'd like to know the *investment* Apple makes into the App Store to operate, improve and secure it. Huge diff between “squatter” and “innovator”. Similar to “patent troll” vs “inventor”. https://twitter.com/... Adi Robertson / @thedextriarchy : Sweeney just spent hours presenting a sweeping unified Epic strategy. Apple's lawyer now trying to separate the pieces out — saying Unreal Engine still isn't banned from iOS, for instance. Erin Griffith / @eringriffith : Why did Epic spend so much time on “Project Liberty”? Sweeney: “We're challenging the two most powerful companies in the world and it would have been foolish to do anything else.” Erin Griffith / @eringriffith : We're now talking about what happened last summer and the purported “special deal”-Sweeney says there were more than a dozen outreach attempts to arrange a meeting with Apple leadership about operating its own store and payment service. Apple did not want to engage.
Context & Ripple Effects
The disclosure arrives as the Apple–Epic trial puts App Store terms under scrutiny, following coverage that framed Apple’s self-favoring platform decisions as an invitation to examine its power. Apple had already drawn scrutiny over decisions favoring its own platform position, while its end-2020 lower commission for smaller developers showed the fee was not immutable.
The newly surfaced email adds historical evidence that Apple internally treated its commission as a profit target, not solely a fixed rule. That matters in a dispute Epic says affects the wider developer ecosystem, including its earlier warning that Apple’s tool restrictions would harm developers beyond Epic.
First-order effects
- Apple’s trial record now includes Phil Schiller’s 2011 willingness to lower the App Store commission if annual store profit remained at $1 billion, giving Epic a concrete internal document to use in contesting the 30% rate.
- Developers and Epic gain a clearer reference point for arguing that App Store commissions have been subject to business trade-offs inside Apple; Apple must place that discussion in the context of its wider store policies.
Second-order effects
- Apple’s late-2020 reduced commission for developers earning under $1 million becomes more salient as evidence that differentiated pricing is operationally possible, increasing pressure to explain why larger developers remain on different terms.
- The disclosure strengthens the commercial relevance of Epic’s trial testimony that Tim Sweeney would have accepted an exclusive App Store arrangement, because commission structure and distribution access are shown as negotiable business variables rather than separate debates.
Third-order effects
- If courts and policymakers increasingly treat platform commissions as prices that can be tested against profit targets, gatekeepers will face more pressure to justify uniform take rates and exceptions with transparent criteria.
- The dispute points toward app distribution being governed less by a single posted commission and more by negotiated or regulated access terms, although the trial record alone does not establish which model will prevail.
The trend: App-store gatekeepers are facing a shift from defending fixed commission norms to defending how their pricing, access rules, and profits fit together.