There’s a Best Buy a few miles from my house. Why aren't I allowed to put my own products on their shelves, or set up a little folding table next to the phone accessories to sell my own cases?

It is not fair to me as a merchant that everyone who wants to buy a phone case goes to Best Buy. That's where all the foot traffic is. It's clearly anti-competitive that they expect me to pay for shelf space I benefit from.

And now they want to charge me to verify that the USB-C cables I'm selling actually work? How is that remotely reasonable? Just because most of my cables are faulty and customers will inevitably go complain to their customer service desk, why should I bear that cost?

Consumers deserve the right to choose accessories from multiple independent merchants inside Best Buy. Suggesting otherwise is anti-consumer, anti-choice, and proof that you hate open and accessible ecosystems.

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anonymous908213 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

For this analogy to be comparable, you would first have to consider that Best Buy, together with Walmart, owns 99.9999% of all store real estate in the world. You would also have to consider that the "shelf space" in this case is free and comes at zero cost to Best Buy; in fact, giving you virtual shelf space increases the amount of traffic that comes into their stores, resulting in a benefit to themselves.

Your analogy as presented was so lacking in merit you might as well have been talking about cats and leprechauns for how completely nonsensical it was to bring it up in the context of Apple.

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mike_d 2 days ago | parent [-]

Simon and GGP combined do own an overwhelming percentage of all retail square footage in the US, but lets at least consider the rest of the argument here.

Apple's "shelf space" is not free. There are constant R&D expenses involved in introducing new sensors and screens that make the underlying apps better. They take on the support load of on-boarding users, managing the relationship, and dealing with any problems. Advertising, carrier validation, third party hardware ecosystem, etc.

Epic wants to sidestep all of the costs of building a platform, and offload support costs onto Apple.

	▲	anonymous908213 a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Simon and GGP combined do own an overwhelming percentage of all retail square footage in the US This is factually incorrect, and not only incorrect, but so wildly far from being correct that one wonders if this statement was made in bad faith. They only have around 300 million sqft out of an estimated 12 billion sqft, around 2.5%. That is not an overwhelming percentage, nor is it "99.9999% of all retail square footage in the world", which was not a hyperbolic statement. Competitors in retail can obtain their own shelf space. You cannot obtain your own shelf space for mobile software. The network effects of hardware+OS centralization are too strong, so there are and never will be any viable competitors to iOS and Android. > Apple's "shelf space" is not free. There are constant R&D expenses involved in introducing new sensors and screens that make the underlying apps better. The R&D expenses do not change regardless of whether there are 1 million or 10 million apps available for iOS. Allowing people to distribute their own software comes at no cost to Apple. > They take on the support load of on-boarding users, managing the relationship, and dealing with any problems. Apple absolutely does not do any of this as it pertains to individual apps. > Epic wants to sidestep all of the costs of building a platform, and offload support costs onto Apple Nobody is asking for Apple's support; really, what the world needs is less of Apple's involvement in the hardware the people own, not more. Epic is clearly willing to spend money on building platforms, since it has a documented $600 million in losses in its effort to build a competitor to Steam. This, however, is not a case where it is possible to build a platform.

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stale2002 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It is not fair to me as a merchant

You absolutely can sell your product as a merchant! Best buy doesnt force you to pay them a fee, if you are selling electronics. You are perfectly within your right to ship the electronics to the merchant yourself and best buy doesnt take a dime!

The same is not true for Apple. For Apple, a customer can want to make a direct agreement with an app store developer, without the involvement of Apple in any way, on the phone that they completely own, and Apple wasn't allowing this to happen.

It would be like if it was illegal to setup competing stores that are located next to best buy that dont involve best buy in any way. That would be absurd.

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HDThoreaun 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Best buy owns their store. I own my phone. You can open a store next door to best buy, thats what epic wants to be allowed to do on ios.

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knollimar 2 days ago | parent [-]

Apple pays 100% of the tax on the service road to the stores and pays for the parking lot, though. They deserve some fee and that's what the courts said, right?

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johnnyanmac 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

You call it a tax, most others would call it the cost of doing business.

But yes, that's built into the product's price. Devs are paying for a license to work with IOS and need to own hardware only Apple sells to work on IOS. So I think those costs are covered.

We'll see what the "reasonable" price is. If nothing else, we know 27% was too much even for appeals.

	▲	knollimar 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Payment processing is worth 3. I assume the other stuff is somewhere within an order of magnitude of that, so maybe like 9-12% total is fair?

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stale2002 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> They deserve some fee

Not if the only way to get to the store was through that road. In that case, there are public access laws and it is literally illegal for people who "own" a road to charge people money, if there is an easement.

Thats probably a simplification, but they are called "easement by necessity." rights. So even in your example of the roadway, thats also wrong. They get zero dollars.

	▲	knollimar 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Isn't that only to get somewhere else? My point is in the real world sharing an area with it would mean the other store also contributes tax wise. It's not equivalent to bring up real life if the real life paying part isn't also adhered to; the lack of symmetry is notable. I don't think they deserve to set their price, though (30% is way too high).