On Thursday, the video game giant Epic Games behind “Fortnite” challenged Apple. Epic has added a new payment option to the game to circumvent the 30% sales share Apple collects from developers through the App Store.
Obviously, Epic already knew that he would be evicted from the app store for blatantly violating Apple’s regulations. A few hours after Epic made changes to its app, Apple delisted Fortnite. Soon after, Epic filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming that Apple had set rules for the only distribution channel for apps on the iPhone, thus having an unfair competitive advantage. Epic also held an event inside “Fortnite”, imitating Apple’s iconic Mac advertisement “1984” to mock Apple’s current monopolistic power position.
Epic’s challenge to the giant Apple, which has a market value of up to 2 trillion US dollars, is an epic battle . Moreover, this is also the latest battle for large technology companies to challenge Apple’s App Store policy and rules. Epic hopes to seize the current public sentiment against technology giants and challenge Apple’s dominance in the mobile application ecosystem.
In the past year or so, we have seen more and more companies express their dissatisfaction with the Apple App Store’s commission system more openly and actively. Some of them even took Epic’s action this time as a good opportunity to “knock down” Apple.
Last year, Spotify filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in the European Union. Just a few hours after “Fortnite” was removed from the App Store, Spotify issued a statement supporting Epic. Match Group also announced its support for this move by Epic. Match Group is the developer of popular dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge.
Recently, more and more famous brand companies have publicly opposed Apple’s policy of 30% in the App Store, and some other policies have also been opposed.
Both Microsoft and Google have newly launched video game streaming services, but due to Apple’s regulations, the two companies cannot put their apps in Apple’s App Store. Last week, Apple stated that this was because they could not individually evaluate each game offered in the streaming service. Previously, Microsoft said that Apple would not allow its new services to run on the iPhone, which disappointed fans.
Then there is Tile, a company that specializes in making location tags for lost items, and Sonos, a connected speaker maker that competes with Apple in hardware and music software. Both of these companies are critical of Apple and even testify in Congress, accusing Apple of controlling the mobile application market.
These companies that openly challenge Apple are not small companies. For example, Epic Games alone has a private valuation of US$17 billion and is backed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent. There are lawyers, funds, and anger behind these anti-Apple companies, which are enough to delay the fight for as long as you want. In addition, the most important thing is that they have the ability to withstand a little business loss caused by being removed, and other small application developers, although they have suffered from Apple for a long time, they dare not speak because of fear of retaliation.
Just as important as money is the user base. Epic’s game “Fortress Night” has at least 350 million registered users and billions of hours of play every month. Match Group’s dating app has more than 10 million paying users, and tens of millions of free users. The video game services of Microsoft and Google have the potential to turn video games into large-scale subscription services similar to Netflix.
The beauty of Epic’s declaration of war is to use its huge fan base to oppose Apple’s policies, and they portray Apple as the evil behemoth with which it has been fighting. Hey boys, do you want to play Fortnite on your iPhone? Um, sorry, you can’t play, go and blame Apple. I have a feeling that this will not be the last company to take this stance. At the cost of a short-term blow, in the hope that Apple can make some concessions.
Another important point of this matter is that Google also delisted “Fortnite” on Thursday. Google operates Google Play, the main application store for Android devices, and can also get 30% of the user’s purchases from Google Play. But Google said that users can still download “Fortress Night” through other third-party app stores, so that they can continue to play the game on Android devices, but Apple does not allow third parties to operate app stores on the iPhone.
However, for app developers, Google is not their bullseye, Apple is.
Although Android dominates the smartphone operating system market, Apple has brought in more sales revenue through its App Store. Taking Epic as an example, data from the research company Sensor Tower shows that the company has generated more than $43 million in sales through the Apple App Store in the past 30 days. In the same period, sales on Google Play were only slightly more than $3 million.
If you are an application developer and you want to make money, you have to start with Apple. This means that even if you don’t want to, you have to follow Apple’s rules.
But now, all kinds of struggles are spreading to the public eye because of the offensives launched by manufacturers. If this momentum continues, Apple will have to make some concessions to ease tensions.
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