After Spotify, Telegram joins the developers’ movement of suing Apple for its overrated Appstore share. The messenger and other companies allege Apple for several issues like price cuts, slow updates, censorship controls and user privacy while using Appstore. This is after the allegation that Apple has secretly traded unfair deals with Amazon in 2016.
Telegram and Spotify, along with few other developers have filed a lawsuit against Apple in Europe for its 30% price cut through Appstore. According to Apple’s policies, app developers have to pledge 30% share of their revenue obtained their Appstore in the first year of onboarding. This will be reduced to 15% from the second year onwards.
The 30% price cut includes not just the app subscriptions, but also the in-app purchases made in the first year! This is channelized through Apple’s payment system within Appstore, thus automatically cutting Apple’s share before crediting the developer. Telegram’s spokesperson has confirmed this lawsuit allegation on Apple and pointed to the Telegram’s blog post.
The post made by Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram criticised Apple’s practises over seven instances. This includes the 30% price cut, delays in processing the app updates pushed by developers due to going through Apple’s slow review system,
censorship controls as what can be allowed and what not and the user privacy issues where Apple can see what’s being downloaded and by whom.
Defending such allegations, Apple’s Tim Cook justified while testifying before Antitrust Committee as the Appstore is taking reasonable charge, and is facing stiff competition from peers. These were again quashed by Telegram as baseless since they cannot rule out iPhone community anyway and Apple also makes the cost of shifting very costly, this being monopolistic.
