Wired
IT House May 26 news, according to MacRumors reports, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said that Apple’s App Store has helped app developers earn more than $260 billion since its launch, but this is “a great deal for developers.” harm”, forcing them to “substandard” their applications.
Tim Sweeney made the comments in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, where he repeated Epic Games’ earlier talking points about Apple and how it is “anti-competitive” and “monopoly”. Sweeney said Apple “earned fairness” in persuading customers to buy its hardware, but claimed it was unfair to force customers to use the “App Store.”
“The problem here is the classic monopoly relationship. You start with the hardware. Apple makes smartphones, they make money from smartphones — they deserve it. But then they force all smartphone buyers to use their apps exclusively Store to get digital content. They prevent all other app stores from competing with them on hardware with 1 billion end users. This is the first shackle that completely blocks all competition and market forces that will shape better consumers Good app store and better deals.”
According to Sweeney, Apple used its fairness advantage in hardware to “gain an unfair advantage over competitors and other markets. This breaks all the competitive dynamics that have kept the tech industry healthy in the past.”
Sweeney criticized the App Store for being a platform in and of itself, saying that despite Apple’s attempts to market it as a service, it’s actually “doing a disservice to developers.” “The App Store is not a service. The App Store is a disservice to developers. The App Store forces developers to treat their software sub-par and give customers a sub-par experience to charge uncompetitive treatment fees to inflate the price of digital goods,” said the CEO of Epic Games.
Apple says the “App Store” has helped developers earn more than $260 billion since its launch and nurtured the iOS app economy, creating more than 2.2 million jobs in the U.S. alone.
Epic Games is embroiled in a massive lawsuit against Apple involving the App Store, which began in 2020 and is now in its second year.