They effectively control the destiny of every app developer in the country.”Īndroid commands 99% of the smartphone market in India, according to research firm Counterpoint. Sharma said he was hopeful that Google will address other concerns, especially because in a country like India “we don’t have any other operating system or distribution platform. Competition in payment processing and app distribution is the only path to a fair app marketplace,” said a representative of Epic Games in a statement.
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Android needs to be fully open to competition, with a genuinely level playing field among platform companies, app creators and service providers. Whether it’s 15% or 30%, for apps obtained through the Google Play Store, developers are forced to use Google’s in-app payment services. “While a reduction in the Google app tax may alleviate a small part of the financial burden developers have been shouldering, this does not address the root of the issue. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney had alleged that Apple’s move to lower the App Store fee for smaller developers was orchestrated to sow division among app creators.Īpp makers band together to fight for App Store changes with new ‘Coalition for App Fairness’ The biggest concern firms face today is the inability to use a third-party payments service for billing, he said. “They are basically saying that as soon as you build a business larger than $1 million - which is a very low bar - you are going to pay a 30% fee, which after taxes, becomes 44%,” said Sharma, whose Paytm app competes with Google Pay in India.Ī 30% sales cut and the inability to use third-party billing systems have been points of contention between many developers and app store operators - Apple and Google - and led to a lawsuit by Fortnite-maker Epic Games against the iPhone-maker last year. (Paytm’s app doesn’t sell digital goods using Play Store billing.) Today’s announcement by Google, he said, further raises the question whether Google plans to address concerns raised by serious internet firms at all.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Sharma said established firms will still have to pay an exorbitant amount of fees to Google. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive of mobile payments provider Paytm, India’s most valuable startup, dismissed Google’s move today as a “PR stunt.” More than 150 startups banded together last year after Google said it will collect as high as a 30% cut on in-app purchases in a range of categories made by Android apps.įollowing the backlash, Google delayed mandating the planned Play Store payments rule in India to April 2022 and had reached out to several firms in recent months in the country to better understand their concerns, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The move comes months after changes in Google billing system charges rattled many startups in India.
We believe this is a fair approach that aligns with Google’s broader mission to help all developers succeed.” “This is why we are making this reduced fee on the first $1 million of total revenue earned each year available to every Play developer that uses the Play billing system, regardless of size. “We’ve heard from our partners making $2 million, $5 million and even $10 million a year that their services are still on a path to self-sustaining orbit,” wrote Sameer Samat, VP of Android and Google Play, in a blog post. That drop doesn’t apply to iOS apps if a developer’s revenue on Apple platform exceeds $1 million. Google’s new approach is slightly different from Apple, which last year said it would collect 15% rather than 30% of App Store sales from companies that generate no more than $1 million in revenue through the company’s platform.
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