Telegram CEO: 7 reasons why iPhone users should be worried about the App Store tax
Over the weekend of October 29, 2022, Telegram’s Chief Executive Officer, Pavel Durov, took to his official channel to warn iPhone users about a 30% tax on the App Store they should be worried about.
“In the last few months, many prominent app developers voiced their disapproval of the App Store policies Apple imposes on all apps.
Why should that concern you if you own an iPhone? Here are 7 reasons.
Higher prices. Apple’s 30 % commission makes all apps and digital goods more expensive for you. It goes on top of the price you pay to developers for any services and games you buy on your phone. You pay more for every app, even though Apple already charged you a few hundred dollars more for your iPhone than it cost to make. In short, you keep paying even after you have paid,” began Mr Durov.
He also cited censorship as another reason why iPhone users should be worried because Apple censors what is allowed on their App Store. According to Durov, Apple restricts app developers from telling their users that certain content was hidden from iPhone users specifically at their request.
“Apple should realize how ridiculous their attempt to censor content globally looks: imagine a web browser deciding which websites you are allowed to view,” added Durov.
The CEO went on to list lack of privacy as the third reason why iPhone users should be worried lot, adding the requirement for a user to download from the App Store by first creating an Apple account and logging in to it makes a user easier to track.
According to Durov, “Since the main reason you have to use an Apple account to download an iPhone app is Apple’s desire to enforce their 30% commission, the cost of their greed also includes your private data.”
“Delays in app updates. You get new versions of your apps several days or weeks after they are actually ready, because Apple’s review team is notoriously inefficient and often delays approval for no apparent reason. You would think Apple could use the billions of dollars it receives from third-party apps to hire additional moderators.
Somehow they are unable to do even that, and us – big apps like Telegram – typically have to wait several days to publish updates,” Durov said in his fourth reason.
=For his fifth reason, Mr Durov cited fewer apps in the app store as another reason why iPhone users should be worried.
He explained that Apple’s 30% commission on apps go on top of all other expenses app developers pay for including government taxes, wages, research, servers and marketing.
“Many apps would have been net profitable in a world without Apple’s 30% commission, but being forced to surrender 30% of their revenue to Apple makes them unsustainable. As a result, many of them go bankrupt and lots of great apps you could have enjoyed just don’t exist,” added Mr Durov.
“MORE ADS IN APPS. Because Apple makes selling premium services and accepting donations one-third less meaningful for developers, many of them have to show ads in their apps in order for their companies to survive. Apple’s policies skew the entire industry towards selling user data instead of letting them adopt more privacy-friendly business models like selling additional services to their users,” Mr Durov explained in his sixth reason.
For his final reason, Mr Durov mentioned that iPhone users will have to put up with worse apps because billions of dollars are taken from developers who could have spent the money on improving the quality of their apps.
“Instead, this money rests idly in Apple’s offshore bank accounts and does nothing for the world, while app developers struggle to find resources for the research and development the world needs.The situation is so bad that one would expect Apple’s 30% cut to be unsustainable. Yet it’s been around for more than 10 years and is still there,” said Durov.
In his conclusion, he revealed how content creators were using third-party payment bots to sell individual posts in their Telegram channels in order to receive about 100% of whatever their subscribers paid.
“Unfortunately, we received word from Apple that they were not happy with content creators monetizing their efforts without paying a 30% tax to Apple. Since Apple has complete control over its ecosystem, we had no alternative but to disable such paid posts on iOS devices. This is just another example of how a trillion-dollar monopoly abuses its market dominance at the expense of millions of users who are trying to monetize their own content. I hope that the regulators in the EU, India and elsewhere start taking action before Apple destroys more dreams and crushes more entrepreneurs with a tax that is higher than any government-levied VAT. In the meantime, we at Telegram shall work to offer creators powerful and easy-to-use tools to monetize their content – outside of Apple’s restrictive ecosystem.
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