Apple suffered a major blow to its revenue stream recently when a court ruled that the company had to immediately cease taking cuts from payments made outside its App Store. However industry insider Mark Gurman says in his newsletter Power On that the company’s ultimate goal is to have this decision fully repealed as soon as possible.
The court said that Apple had willfully ignored a prior injunction and continued to take a cut of external payments from app developers. Apple is currently under investigation for whether it will be charged with criminal contempt. The judge said that Apple thought it could break the law and get away with it but that’s not going to happen. Apple has also been accused of lying in court in 2021.
The company made the entire situation even worse when it claimed that it did not know how much profit it generates from the App Store. Things aren’t looking good for the company at the moment and Gurman says that Apple has absolutely no choice right now but to comply with the ruling.
However the company has already asked the court to pause its ruling as part of the appeals process. This isn’t going to go anywhere but it’s part of Apple’s plan to eventually try to get the courts to repeal the ruling entirely.
App developers celebrated the ruling. | Image credit — PhoneArena
Apple will likely try to strike a compromise if it is unable to get the ruling repealed. The company might use the Google Play Store and Samsung’s app store as examples of platforms that also take a cut of external payments. However Apple’s “walled garden” ecosystem makes alternatives a lot harder for people to use and this will work against the company’s appeal.
This isn’t the only revenue stream for Apple that has been threatened by the law recently. The courts are also trying to break up Apple and Google’s partnership for providing the latter’s search engine as the default option on the Safari browser. That will be a loss of $20 billion annually and Apple will try desperately to keep the arrangement intact.
All of this trouble after Apple was forced to allow sideloading, third party NFC payments and other external options in the EU has hit the company hard. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Apple’s walled garden is crumbling and it looks like there’s nothing that the company can do to stop it.
Abdullah loves smartphones, Virtual Reality, and audio gear. Though he covers a wide range of news his favorite is always when he gets to talk about the newest VR venture or when Apple sets the industry ablaze with another phenomenal release.
A discussion is a place, where people can voice their opinion, no matter if it
is positive, neutral or negative. However, when posting, one must stay true to the topic, and not just share some
random thoughts, which are not directly related to the matter.
Things that are NOT allowed:
Off-topic talk - you must stick to the subject of discussion
Offensive, hate speech - if you want to say something, say it politely
Spam/Advertisements - these posts are deleted
Multiple accounts - one person can have only one account
Impersonations and offensive nicknames - these accounts get banned
Moderation is done by humans. We try to be as objective as possible and moderate with zero bias. If you think a
post should be moderated - please, report it.
Have a question about the rules or why you have been moderated/limited/banned? Please,
contact us.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: