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Apple Fellow and former marketing chief Phil Schiller took the witness stand in the Epic Games v. Apple trial on Monday and revealed a number of details about the App Store and developer guidelines.
For example, Schiller said Apple actually reduces its 30 percent commission on in-app purchases to 15 percent for certain apps in exchange for those platforms supporting the Apple TV app.
The Apple TV team had a meeting with premium content providers and described the work they had to do to integrate this new experience. For example, they had to integrate with our voice assistant Siri so that we can find any show through any of these app experiences.
App Store Small Business Program in the works since 2016
The result is that members of the Apple Video Partner Program tech giants from Cupertino will pay a 15% share of in-app purchases in the first year of the subscription. Elsewhere in his testimony, Schiller admitted that Epic Games' antitrust lawsuit helped him get approval for the App Store Small Business Program, which lowers commission rates to 15% for companies that earn less than $1 million a year from the App Store. He said that Epic Games' lawsuit wasn't the reason Apple implemented the program, "but it certainly helped." The program had reportedly been in the works since 2016. He added that Apple's anti-fraud team was "very concerned" about commission levels of anything lower than 15%.
FEAR team takes action against fraud, phishing and more
The Apple employee also confirmed the existence of a group within Apple called FEAR. According to Schiller, the team handles fraud prevention, anti-piracy, anti-spam, and risk management for new features. He added that the team operates "very differently" than Apple's standard app review department. Regarding anti-steering rules, the guidelines that prohibit App Store developers from advertising third-party services, Schiller said that Apple does not automatically share customer emails with developers. However, developers can request customer emails from Apple. Once they have the contact information, developers can communicate with their customers generally about purchasing in-app items from outside the App Store. However, this cannot be targeted, so individual customers will not receive personalized email advertising.
That's why apps like xCloud are not allowed in the App Store
Schiller also talked about gaming services like Microsoft's xCloud. According to the executive, cloud gaming services make it impossible to regulate and maintain the App Store experience. Specifically, Apple wants to assign age ratings, parental controls, app labels, privacy policies and other attributes on a per-app basis, which is not possible with xCloud and other products. When asked how gaming services compare to movie apps, Schiller said that companies like Netflix require users to sign up through an account and agree to a single privacy policy. Customers don't sign up for a single show or series in the same way they do, say, for a game. Earlier on Monday, Schiller revealed that Apple is building a new developer center on its Cupertino campus and revealed that the company spends about $50 million a year on the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). (Image: Apple)
