The Apple Store (since 2008) and the Google Play Store (a few months later) exact a thirty percent tax on all transactions. That’s 30%! This is called the Apple Tax.

Folks who sell through the Apple and Google Play stores believe that is an obscenely high fee. Color your Big Red Car amongst those who hold that opinion. [Note: In this blog post, I will consider the interests and behavior of Apple/Google as one and the same for simplicity.]

Ultimately, this fee — the Apple Tax — is passed along to consumers in the price of the application, meaning you are paying it, dear reader.

Recently, Tinder (Match Group) has taken an aggressive step — starting a revolt, a revolution, hopes your Big Red Car — by bypassing the app pirates (Google Play Store) and taking payments directly from the consumer and downloading their app from their own servers.

The baseline condition is that Apple/Google Play take 30% — the Apple Tax — from any monthly subscriptions that declines to 15% after the first year.

To put the size of the fight into perspective consider that Tinder is believed to be a $1,000,000,000 annual revenue company in 2019. A thirty percent stake would be a $300,000,000 Apple Tax shot in the arm to Apple, for what you ask? Ecommerce administration? Seems a little rich, totally out of proportion to the services rendered.

If you run Tinder, can you find another source of $300,000,000 so obvious? I don’t think so. This has to have been pissing Tinder people off for years, no?

Take it a step further and look at Spotify that competes directly with Apple Music. If they both offer a $10/month subscription, Apple gets $10 while Spotify gets $7 because of the fee. Huge difference to the bottom line of both companies.

Note that Spotify has teed it up with Apple in Europe with an antitrust complaint filed with the European Commission in March 2019.

Don’t touch that TV dial, amigo, there’s more.

Bottom line it, Big Red Car

Bottom line is this, dear reader, Apple and Google Play have generated some substantial push back from their 30% Apple Tax.

Folks are beginning to innovate against sending money to Apple/Google Play to simply download software.

OTOH, I have saved the best for last.

The Apple Store has more than 500,000,000 visitors per week as announced by Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) last year.

Apple developers — 20,000,000 strong worldwide — have received more than $100,000,000,000 in revenue from the Apple Store. That is the other side of the coin.

Does a company want to cut themselves off from that flow of eyeballs?

But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Ciao, amigo! [See what I just did there?]