🏛️ Antitrust breaks Apple's App Store gatekeeping and 30% take rate

“I support it. I've been blue-pilled on this issue. ... And the fact of the matter is, is that Apple has the market power, the same market power greater than Microsoft did in its heyday with the Windows monopoly. They are total gatekeepers of what applications can be built on these iOS devices.”

“The overwhelming revenue, the North Star for developers, where all of the venture capital money goes into, is the funding and developing iOS apps. And in that worldview, iOS is a complete monopoly. ... And breaking up the ability for them to basically dictate a 30% take rate and also loosening the technical guardrails, I think, is a huge step forward.”

“I think this is just a terrible precedent. I think if you guys weren't going to make money by weakening Apple and Alphabet, you guys put your free market hats on, you'd kind of acknowledge that this is just a terrible precedent.”

“We are not saying break up big tech. We're saying get rid of the 30% app store fee because that negatively impacts our portfolios. Let's be clear here.”

“The Apple thing is really big news because it kind of goes to show you that you had you had a pretty progressive legislative framework in South Korea. ... they basically just seeded the market and by deciding to basically conform to this law, then they started with these reader apps and allowing payments. ... It's a beginning of the beginning for the app stores to be deconstructed and opened.”

“I think the root of this is the fact that Apple has this 30% rate on any in-app purchases. And like Bill Gurley said, it's a rate too far, right? Just because you can charge 30% doesn't mean you should charge 30%. ... So I think this 30% rate has ultimately backfired on Apple. It's created a huge backlash, and now they're paying the price. They've already had to roll it back for these so-called reader apps. ... But this now opens the door for this type of thing to apply to games as well, where there's a lot more in-app purchases like Fortnite, right? ... Apple has been a hog and now it's getting slaughtered.”

“clearly consumers and the developers in the App Store ecosystem were vocal and angry enough that this behavioral change from Apple, this structural change kind of came to bear. It didn't require regulatory intervention.”

“What I like about this is, I think this gives Apple the ability to now just compete against everybody in the app store without having to have this... Well, we're partners with you. ... So now they can just compete against everybody directly.”

“So in other words, when you control an operating system and then there's developers or other, you know, downstream players on that ecosystem, you have to treat them fairly. You can't privilege your own policy to then dominate vertical after vertical.”

“I think this is a first step towards a really interesting play that Microsoft could pull, which is essentially to scorch the earth of app stores, which is Google's and Apple's really big money printer, to make a completely open permissible platform with very little to no take rate. ... So Jason, back to why I think you can keep Apple in that basket of shorts. The competitive pressures are mounting by the moves of Microsoft that I think are easier for Google to copy and very difficult for companies like Apple to copy because it creates an incredible disincentive.”