Disney and Apple Are Splitting Over App Store Fees

If you want to sign up for a subscription to Hulu or Disney+, don't bother taking out your iPhone. Disney is now telling would-be customers to pay for subscriptions on Disney's own site, instead of on Apple's App Store -- though people who've already started paying for either service via Apple can keep doing that. From a report: The two companies are still working together on some projects. But the App Store split does represent a rift between two longtime partners, so it's definitely worth noting.

Disney's rationale is clear here: When customers sign up for Disney subscription services via Apple, Apple takes up to 15% of the monthly fees those services generate. And Disney CEO Bob Iger has made it clear that he doesn't want to pay that anymore. "We have to look at the way we're distributing," Iger said at an investor conference in May. "Unlike Netflix, we distribute largely through third-party app stores. There's obviously an advantage to that to some extent, but there's a cost to that, too. And we're looking at that."

Surprised it took so long

[Smonster]

I don’t know why any company with an advertising budge would allow subscriptions through Apple. And I say that as an Apple shareholder.

Re:Surprised it took so long

[Ed Tice]

The reason people like to sign up for subscriptions via Apple is that it's trivial to cancel an App Store subscription. I won't even accept a free trial of an application that doesn't take payment via the Apple App Store. And that would be true if the application was Windows or Linux only. That's okay. Just have a placeholder iOS application that one can use to pay via Apple. I'm astonished that anybody would sign up for a subscription any other way. I'll buy things through Steam. But if it's something where they are going to bill my credit card at the end of the trial or possibly recurring billing. No way it's not going via Apple. There was just an article a day or two ago about how hard it can be to cancel some subscriptions.

Re:

[FictionPimp]

1 click cancel.

Re:

[Njovich]

They get off on being financially submissive to Apple

Re:

[saloomy]

Trust me when I tell you, being bent over by Apple is NOTHING like being bent over by just about anyone else. Cancellation is one thing, but every, and I mean EVERY time I have had a dispute or issue with a payment for an apple payment, Apple have refunded me or taken measures to satisfy me in some way. I have reached out to apple, and told them I cancelled a trial, and deleted the app, forgot to cancel the subscription under subscriptions in my iCloud settings, and they refunded me as I was asking. On anot

Re:

[narcc]

No other company does this.

Bullshit.

Canceling a subscription purchased through Roku is arguably a little simpler. Canceling a subscription with Amazon, either their own services or third-party services, is also trivial. So is canceling a subscription purchased through Google Play.

In all of those cases, you'll find third-party subscriptions presented as a simple list in an obvious place. Canceling a subscription from there takes just a few seconds with something like a quick click, manage, cancel, confirm.

Apple has BY FAR the best experience.

How would you know? It sh

Re:

[Ed Tice]

Do you notice what your entire list has in common? They all involve paying via a third-party service that has chosen to make cancelling easier as a form of customer service. All of those third-parties charge heavy fees to the service provider. Google's fees are as high as Apple's. I don't know about Roku's fees. From what I can tell from a web search, Amazon charges a lower fee.

Note that, with Amazon's lower fees, they could no longer offer subscriptions to things like newspapers and stopped doing it

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[narcc]

Do you notice what your entire list has in common? They all involve paying via a third-party service that has chosen to make cancelling easier as a form of customer service.

Did you think this was a unique insight? Are you a new reader?

Re: Surprised it took so long

[saloomy]

Making cancelling a subscription easy is not what I was talking about and why Apple has the best customer service here. Reread my comment and understand that I do have experience with Roku and Google, and Amazon pay. I have used them all. Call Roku and explain that you bought or subscribed to something accidentally, see if they are lenient. I bet that wonâ(TM)t be as much as Apple has been.

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[narcc]

LOL! I think you need to reread your comment ... and mine.

You're clearly still stuck in the reality distortion field.

Re:

[Ed Tice]

It was right in my original post. "It's trivial to cancel." But thanks to @FictionPimp for also replying.

Re: Surprised it took so long

[alantus]

That sounds better than Google's refund policy, which is basically: No Refunds.

Re:

[The-Ixian]

I think that, until recently, part of Apple's license agreement was that you couldn't even mention external payment systems in your app. Basically, you couldn't let your own customers know that you could pay elsewhere.

That was the one concession that Epic got out of their law suit against Apple for the AppStore practices.

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[MachineShedFred]

Especially since they are hardly the first, and won't be the last.

Amazon, Netflix, Spotify and other already did this move a long time ago. Years ago for Amazon's Kindle app.

and disney takes like 99% of the gate at the movie

[Joe_Dragon]

and disney takes like 99% of the gate at the movies!

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[dysmal]

and disney takes like 99% of the gate at the movies!

Exactly! It's OK when Disney fleeces someone else but when someone cuts into The Mouse's cheese? Nope!

Never mind that Disney has been churning out over priced mediocre sequels while trying to bleed all creativity from their franchises. Never mind that Apple has more money than Scrooge McDuck. Never mind that both charge obscene amounts of money while not sharing the proceeds with their day-to-day workers.

Re:and disney takes like 99% of the gate at the mo

[MachineShedFred]

Disney also paid to produce the movie. They paid the animators, editors, voice actors, actual actors, set construction folks, camera / light / sound operators, paid for the studio time, paid for the edit bay time, paid for the writers, etc. This is a bad comparison.

Disney has their own digital distribution infrastructure. Why do they need to pay Apple for that?

Disney uses their own video distribution and streaming infrastructure. Why do they need to pay Apple for that?

Disney has their own marketing, which is just as successful (if not more so) than Apple. Why do they need to pay Apple for that?

Disney has their own banking relationships and retail operations that are more than capable of reconciling credit card transactions. Why do they need to pay Apple for that?

Answer to all four questions: because Apple said so, and no other reason beyond.

bit confusing

[timeOday]

I think the rules in play are the outcome of Epic's billion-dollar war [gamefile.news] over alternate stores and outside payment on iOS.

Although the outcome here is confusing. I guess competitors can't make their own app stores for iPhone, but can point people to other payment methods to avoid the apple tax.

The justices also turned away Epic's appeal of the lower court's ruling that Apple's App Store policies limiting how software is distributed and paid for do not violate federal antitrust laws. The justices gave no reasons for their decision to deny the appeals.

In a series of posts on X, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney wrote: The Supreme Court denied both sides' appeals of the Epic v. Apple antitrust case. The court battle to open iOS to competing stores and payments is lost in the United States. A sad outcome for all developers. Now the District Court's injunction against Apple's anti-steering rule is in effect, and developers can include in their apps "buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to IAP."

As of today, developers can begin exercising their court-established right to tell US customers about better prices on the web. These awful Apple-mandated confusion screens are over and done forever. The fight goes on. Regulators are taking action and policymakers around the world are passing new laws to end Apple's illegal and anticompetitive app store practices. The European Union's Digital Markets Act goes into effect March 7.

https://apple.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]

Can they both lose?

[Gleenie]

If there's a way they can *both* lose out of this, I hope we can find it.

Wrote title.

[Gravis Zero]

Two corporations that always get their way are surprised the other won't let them get their way

That's the reality.