The service segment brought Apple more than 46 billion USD and accounted for nearly 18% of the company’s revenue in 2019. Apple also aims to increase this revenue to 50 billion USD this year.
The reason comes from Apple requiring developers to pay the company 15 to 30% of application revenue, causing many parties to have to increase subscription fees to ensure profits.
The wave of protests has been around for several years but flared up in June, after the controversy between Apple and Basecamp.
Many developers are dissatisfied with the 30% `protection fee` for Apple.
David Heinemeier Hansson, Basecamp’s CTO, criticized Apple for refusing to update its Hey email app on the App Store.
The previous version of Hey 1.0 was approved on the App Store, but version 1.0.1 was refused to be updated.
Many leading application developers, such as Match Group – creator of the dating service Tinder, or Epic Games – owner of the famous game Fortnite, also spoke out in support of Basecamp and complained about the fee policy that exists
According to Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, it’s time for US and European lawmakers to take a look at the tricks app stores are using to take advantage of developers.
The technology world believes that Apple should not open a marketplace (meaning App Store) and then sell similar items on its own, competing with third-party applications there.
The controversy broke out immediately after the Antitrust Authority of the European Union (EU) announced it would be investigating Apple’s monopolistic behavior from June 16.
On the contrary, Apple believes that its strict control of the App Store is to ensure that the software running on the iPhone is safe enough in terms of security.
`We comply with the law in all our activities and encourage competition because we believe it drives us to create better outcomes,` an Apple spokesperson said.
Apple also expressed disappointment with the European Commission for conducting the investigation because of `baseless complaints from a few companies that simply want everything to be free and do not want to comply with the general rules.`
Chau An