[fireman15]

Why post an article that is behind a pay wall? Trying to encourage the FR tradition of commenting without reading?

It doesn't take a lot of effort to get around the FT pay wall. Using the brave browser I used DuckDuckGo.com to search for the title of the article “Epic vs Apple: what we learnt from the trial that could change the iPhone”. The first link that came up was from scoopnest.com and it had an embedded link to https://www.ft.com/content/fc8fd505-2e75-4646-b2a7-34d32796f32a which went around the paywall in the brave browser but interestingly enough still does not work in Microsoft Edge.

Here is a longer excerpt from the article that gives a better idea what the gyst of the lawsuit is actually about... Apple's ongoing monopolistic behaivior. Posting the complete article would violate FT and Free Republic terms of use.

"When Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, opened its case against Apple at the start of this month, accusing the iPhone maker of operating an illegal monopoly, the legal analyst Nick Rodelli gave the software developer a one-in-three chance of prevailing. Others put the odds even lower."

"By the time the judge retired on Monday to consider her verdict, which could have big consequences for a billion iPhone users and thousands of app developers — not to mention Apple’s profits — the case looked harder to call."

"Rodelli, who works for the investment research firm CFRA, put the chances at 55 per cent in Epic’s favour. Apple, he said, had lost credibility by pleading ignorance on key questions, while Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers appeared to be more interested in present-day business facts than older legal precedents — a plus for Epic, which has conceded its case lies on the “frontiers” of antitrust theory."

"Here are five takeaways from the trial:"

"App Store margins"

"Apple threw Fortnite out of the App Store last year when Epic tried to get round the 30 per cent commission that the iPhone maker charges on app sales and purchases made inside the smartphone’s games."

"Epic claimed that the App Store operates with a 78 per cent profit margin and that this reflects a monopolistic stranglehold on developers, who are forced to go through the App Store to reach iPhone users. Emails among Apple executives going back to 2010 indicated the App Store was already more profitable than anticipated early on." "Apple disagreed but did not rebut it with a figure of its own. It argued it could not calculate a margin figure for the App Store because it does not break out the costs and revenues that way."

"That allowed Epic to argue that Apple’s reluctance to discuss the details was itself evidence that the iPhone maker is aware of the anti-competitive optics at play."

"Tim Cook’s testimony Observers of the trial saw a turning point during the testimony of Tim Cook on Friday last week. He also tried to sidestep questions about the issue of profit margins, and much else, too."

And the article goes on from there, but this probably is enough to give a better idea of what the article is actually about so that appropriate comments canbe made.

[Swordmaker]

"Epic claimed that the App Store operates with a 78 per cent profit margin and that this reflects a monopolistic stranglehold on developers, who are forced to go through the App Store to reach iPhone users. Emails among Apple executives going back to 2010 indicated the App Store was already more profitable than anticipated early on." … "Apple disagreed but did not rebut it with a figure of its own. It argued it could not calculate a margin figure for the App Store because it does not break out the costs and revenues that way."

The reason that Apple could not provide an exact margin for the App Store is that it’s programming of iOS APIs which the iOS developers use, or the SDKs are not charged in the costs of operating the App Store but are intrinsically a cost of operating it. They are developed along with the development of iOS and charged there.

This 78% margin claim is not even possible as the maximum theoretical revenue from the App Store before costs, which include development of APIs, maintenance of server farms, leasing of non-owned server space, credit card servicing, Point-of-sales, loss prevention (my lady’s Goddaughter works for Apple in iOS App Store’s loss prevention fraud prevention department), customer service, etc., is the 30% commission from sales. To claim that Apple is operating with a 78% profit margin on their App stores is patently absurd and shows an overall and abysmal ignorance of GAAP (Generally Accept Accounting Principles). Apple returned approximately that amount of revenue TO the developers, not retained it for themselves! Most other app stores from other platforms kept more.

This Obama appointed leftist judge is more interested in hers, Epic’s, and others’ feelings about Apple’s App Store than she is about the rule of law and Anti-trust precedents… she is as much as admitting. She may rule against Apple, but she will be over-turned on appeal if she does. She is NOT an Anti-Trust specialist court. She is merely a District Court judge with a Progressive bias. —PING!

EPIC GAMES vs. APPLE PING!

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