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- App makers like Spotify have been criticizing Apple’s App Store fees and various store practices for a while now.
- Now, several of these app developers and longtime critics of Apple’s App Store policies have come together to form a non-profit organization, the Coalition for App Fairness.
- The app creators involved also include Epic, Match, Tile, Deezer, and many others.
Popular app creators like Spotify and the developer behind Fortnite who long criticized Apple’s App Store fees, have now taken their fight against the iPhone maker’s practices to a new level.
Those longtime Apple critics like Spotify as well as Epic and Match Group have launched a nonprofit organization, the Coalition for App Fairness, which aims to formalize their ongoing fight against Apple App Store practices such as the commission of between 15% and 30% that app makers are hit for using the payment settings in the store app. If you open the coalition’s website, right at the top in large print, viewers are greeted by the following statement that attempts to explain why the group was founded: “Every day, Apple collects taxes from consumers and crushes the innovation”.
“For most purchases made within the App Store,” argues the coalition, “Apple takes 30% of the purchase price. No other transaction fee, in any industry, comes close.
“If consumers want to use a modern mobile device, Apple applies a tax that no one can avoid. No competition, no options, no recourse. Apple’s App Store policies are prisons consumers must pay for and developers cannot escape from. “
Citing CNBC, the coalition continues to criticize Apple for raising an estimated $ 15 billion annually from its so-called app tax alone.
In addition to the big-name app makers like Spotify that are part of this new non-profit organization, additional members include Basecamp, Deezer, Tile, and the Protonmail email service. As part of the coalition’s mission, it has established a set of 10 guiding principles that it upholds, principles that include the following: “No developer should be required to pay unfair, unreasonable or discriminatory fees or revenue shares, or to sell Anything you don’t want to sell within your app as a condition of accessing the app store. “
Some of the app makers involved in the coalition, such as Spotify, are involved in actual fights involving Apple on other fronts, such as through the antitrust lawsuit Spotify filed in the European Union against Apple. Basecamp also had a fight with Apple this year after an update for its Hey email app was not approved. Still, at the end of the day, it’s hard to see where all of this tips the balance of power away from being in Apple’s favor. Minus any legislation that Apple imposes here, app makers voluntarily submit their apps to the Apple store and are therefore bound by the rules it imposes. And Apple, for now at least, has given no indication that it will change them anytime soon.
Andy is a reporter from Memphis who also contributes to outlets like Fast Company and The Guardian. When he’s not writing about tech, he can be found hunched over protectively over his burgeoning vinyl collection, as well as minding his whovianism and choking on a variety of TV shows he probably doesn’t like.
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