UK Hits Apple With $1 Billion Class Action Lawsuit Over 30% App Store Fee
Jakob Aylesbury / 1 year ago
Apple has been handed a class action lawsuit in the UK from over 1,500 app developers which claims that the 30% fee in the App Store is excessive.
Apple Lawsuit
The Lawsuit as shared by appleinsider.com, comes from 1566 UK app developers who started the lawsuit because the 30% fee that Apple takes from app store sales is excessive and “only possible due to its monopoly on the distribution of apps onto iPhones and iPads.” Currently, Apple charges a 30% fee for any transaction on the app store which is reduced to 15% for subscriptions which last over a year as well as for small businesses that earn less than $1 million in a year.
Is This Really a Problem?
So I personally dislike Apple but 30% seems like a normal amount to be charging for use of their App Store. From what I can gather online from several sources, Steam takes a 30% cut for game sales, before 2021 Microsoft was taking a 30% cut on the Xbox Store and Sony also takes 30% from sales. Additionally, The Google Play store also takes the same 15% under $1 million and 30% above $1 million which was a choice to mirror Apple. What is the issue here, why are Apple developers so hard done by the same commission that other platforms mirror? It will be interesting to see how this claim holds because if it does then they might as well sue the Play Store as well.
What do you think of this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.