A new email app, Hey, has hit back at Apple after it was rejected from the App Store. It happened because the Basecamp team behind it were offering a subscription but not using Apple’s in-app purchase system.
Hey Will Not Pay App Store Tax
Hey users could not sign-up or pay within the iOS app, and Apple said this was against its rules. Apple softened a bit, saying that existing subscribers could log-in, but there still had to be an in-app purchasing option. This would mean Apple getting its 30 percent cut of subscriptions generated that way.
Fair to say, the team behind the app are not happy. Basecamp co-founder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson too Protocol:
If we can’t have Hey on iOS,” he said, “we’re nowhere. We have to be on the biggest platform in this segment, and Apple knows that.
Developers he speaks to about Apple “sound like hostages,” he added. “There is never in a million years a way that I am paying Apple a third of our revenues. That is obscene, and it’s criminal, and I will spend every dollar that we have or ever make to burn this down until we get to somewhere better.”
[App Store Ecosystem Supported $519 Billion Globally in 2019]
I kinda agree with the developer here
30% was fine when Apple was building the store, but now it’s up, it exists, the cost is minimal. 30% is now excessive.
Forcing companies to run purchases through the store so Apple gets a cut of a product or service even if it never goes anywhere near the store (I’m thinking Amazon Kindle, Spotify, etc.,” is ridiculous.
This is why Apple is pushing developers to switch over to a subscription model. IT does noting for, and is even detrimental to the customer. IT’s all so Apple can get their cut.
Apple needs to take a long hard look at this. If they don’t these voices yelling for antitrust action against them are going to grow louder. Eventually one of them will win and Apple’s profitable house will crumble..