Apple Will Take 15 Percent From Purchases Outside Its Own Store Too: the Price Was Not Announced, It Was Extracted in Court

When a company worth more than all the Balkan economies combined tries to buy itself a few more months of delay in court and fails, that is when you find out what the price has been all along. On Thursday Apple filed a document with the District Court in Northern California proposing to charge a 15 percent commission on purchases iPhone users make through an external link - meaning outside the App Store, on somebody else's site, with somebody else's payment system.

The structure has several tiers. Small developers would pay 5 percent. Those inside Apple's special programmes - for video, for news, for mini-apps - would pay 10 percent. Subscription renewals also drop to 10 percent. Everything else: 15 percent.

The key question is not the number, but why it exists at all. The purchase happens on somebody else's server, with somebody else's payment infrastructure, for a product Apple did not build. The company's argument is that it has to recoup its investment in the tools and technology that keep the App Store alive. You can look at it that way. You can also look at it like this: it is rent on a door the user has already walked out of.

The backdrop is a courtroom war that has been running for years. Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, sued Apple over anti-competitive behaviour on commissions. The court ordered Apple to disclose this specific structure, and Apple tried to postpone answering until the Supreme Court ruled on another question in the same case - whether the company defied a court order when it introduced a 27 percent commission on external purchases along with rules restricting how developers were even allowed to mention that door.

On Thursday the Supreme Court rejected the request for a delay. Only then did Apple publish the figures. That sequence is worth remembering: the price was not announced, it was extracted.

In its filing Apple compares itself to Google Play, which charges 20 percent for standard apps, 15 percent for those in special programmes and 10 percent on renewals - and adds that Epic Games accepted those rates. The comparison is accurate and at the same time says something other than what it means to say: the two companies that control all mobile distribution on the planet charge almost identically. When two suppliers have the same prices, that is not usually called competition.

For a developer in Skopje, Zagreb or Sofia this is not distant American news. Anyone selling a subscription through an app pays the same commission as somebody in California, only out of far smaller revenue. Do 15 percent from the Balkans weigh the same as 15 percent from Silicon Valley?