Apple Sees Serious Challenge To Its Monopoly and "Apple Tax." It's About Time.

Over the past few weeks, people are finally standing up to Apple. The recent backlash started with the release of iOS 14, which began redirecting web links from News+ publishers directly to the Apple News app. All of a sudden publishers and their gated content that was behind a paywall on their own sites was being provided to users who chose to pay Apple News a $9.99 monthly subscription fee instead, which cannibalized a publisher’s own subscription audience. Then, Facebook called out Apple for refusing to lower their app store fee for a Facebook feature designed to help small business owners during the pandemic.

Then the biggest challenge came, from Fortnite game creator Epic Games who created its own in-app payment system to bypass paying the 30% “Apple Tax.” So the game was banned from both Apple’s app store and Google’s store, sparking a lawsuit and brilliant PR response from Epic Games. The brand released a protest video that remade Apple’s famous 1984 commercial by casting Apple as the bad guys. They are focused on Apple because unlike Android, there are no side-loading or other hack-friendly ways to install the game on iPhones.

With 350 million users, Fortnite has the heft to challenge Apple and they are leading a fight on behalf of the rest of the industry. Whether they win or not, the move is already driving higher loyalty among their players - and has the whole industry and world watching. I suppose everyone likes to see a bully meet their match.