Apple is having various legal problems right now with different monopoly charges by favoring some companies over others. These days various hearings are being held where Apple, Amazon, Facebook or Google participate to respond to these accusations. After this hearing, some documents have been published that point to a favorable treatment for Amazon.
Apple accuses monopolistic practice
The court tries to demonstrate at all costs that there is a monopolistic practice on the App Store. Some applications are being favored over others with a clear favor treatment. The company, not surprisingly, seems to try to always stimulate users to use their own applications ‘attacking’ those of the competition. This is obviously totally unfair and must be regulated at all costs. Throughout the trial, Apple CEO Tim Cook wanted to show the equality that exists in the App Store with all developers. But to counter this information from the court they have published a series of documents to support their accusations.
The association with Amazon took a long time to arrive but it was in 2017 when the arrival of Amazon Prime Video to the App Store and Apple TV was made official at WWDC. This association between Amazon and Apple seems to have had a component of favoritism. This is what follows an email between Jeff Bezos and Eddy Cue that was sent in late 2016 where the agreement between the two companies is summarized.
Apple would have given a favor deal to Amazon
Apple typically keeps 30% of an app’s subscriptions for the first year. Once the year border is passed, this percentage drops to 15% in order to favor the developer’s income. Although this is the standard agreement that should apply to all developers, it seems that a small distinction was made with Amazon. In the email it is verified that Apple only kept 15% of the income generated by Amazon subscriptions. That is why Amazon kept from the first day with 85% of the income generated when the rest of the developers had to keep 70%. But Tim Cook has not picked up absolutely any of this, since in the audience he affirmed that from Apple they treat all the developers in the same way. With the publication of these emails, Apple and the CEO himself have been left in a very bad position.
Obviously, if we put ourselves in the shoes of an entrepreneur, we must always seek the most satisfactory treatment in order to have the best services available to users. The problem may be that there is no transparency or sincerity. With the words of Tim Cook affirming that there is no distinction of any kind between developers, he has been left as an insincere person. We will have to wait for all the events and the research that is taking place on different companies to unfold.
