Cupertino spent the week with great headaches. The dispute over whether or not the App Store exerts monopoly pressure has always been at the center of the hurricane. Powered by large companies such as Spotify, they have promoted an investigation into the European Commission to find out if the Apple store has monopoly policies. However, all this comes as a result of the rules of the App Store known as "Review Guidelines." The last straw in the last few hours is the rejection of a new application called Hey, which had previously been accepted due to the problem that recurs over and over again: subscriptions and in-app purchases.
Let's start at the beginning: the App Store review guidelines
To put ourselves in context a bit and understand the keys to the situation, it is necessary to focus on the App Store review guidelines. These are the rules that developers must adhere to with their applications to allow approval. Once these reviews are completed, the app can begin to download.
The most problematic point of these guidelines is the in-app purchases or what is known before as "In App Purchase". All applications that have the possibility of improving functions through subscriptions or additional purchases They will have to be included within the app and processed within it through the App Store.
So far fine. However, Apple takes a 30% commission the first year. From the second year on, the commission is cut in half. That is, if the first year an application has a turnover of 100 euros in subscriptions, Apple pockets a whopping 30 euros "without doing anything". For many developers this policy is unfair for many reasons. The first: a service that offers a subscription on its official website also has to offer it in the application. Therefore, if I want to use that subscription, regardless of where I buy it, it is necessary that it is also offered within the application, otherwise Apple will decline the app.
For this there is an exception, as always. There are some applications called "Reader" such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and many others that do allow access to content without the possibility of accessing the subscription through in-application purchases. That is to say, These apps manage to allow the user to access a subscription that is fully pocketed without Apple limiting their range of action as an application.
The problem with the Hey app and the immobility to the change of the rules
Hey is the new email app created by the creators of other apps like Basecamp. It is a new email model whose access has a cost. This subscription is made through its official website. Like much of the emails, the developers submitted their app for review to the App Store. The app was initially accepted and became available on the App Store.
However, days later the application was removed from the App Store and the developers received a letter with a multitude of points that violated the review guidelines discussed above. In one of his last interviews, Phill Schiller, Apple's marketing director, assured that the app's approval was purely in error.
Hey Email app is marketed as an email app on the App Store, but when users download their app, it doesn't work. Users cannot use the application to access email or perform any useful functions until after going to the Hey Email website on Basecamp and purchasing a license to use the application.
That is, when a user downloads the Hey application, they cannot access its internal services Unless you purchase a license from the official website of the service. As we discussed before, Apple forces developers to include any type of subscription within the application. But in addition, the big apple goes further and ensures that there is a case within the store in which this mechanism could be carried out, the known and previously commented "Reader" applications. However, the App Store in its app rejection letter assured that Hey Email is not part of this group of applications.
Throughout the interview, Phill Schiller assured that Apple is not thinking of modifying the rules of the App Store. But there are other ways to allow adding apps more easily. One of them, and referring to Hey Email, is to apply a free version to the app and a paid version.
Right now we are not considering any changes to the App Store rules. There are many things that (developers) could do to make the application work within the rules that we have. We would love for you to do that.