{"id":18028,"date":"2017-05-18T14:25:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T18:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=18028"},"modified":"2017-07-31T20:21:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T00:21:46","slug":"apple-wants-30-of-tips-from-chinese-chat-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/18\/apple-wants-30-of-tips-from-chinese-chat-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Wants 30% of Tips From Chinese Chat Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Hardwick<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Apple has told several Chinese social networking apps to disable their “tip” functions to comply with App Store<\/a> rules, according to executives at WeChat and other companies.<\/p>\n

The tip functions in Chinese messaging platforms are free to use and allow people to send authors and other content creators monetary tips through transfers to mobile wallet accounts. However, according to The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>, Apple has decided that tips are equivalent to in-app purchases – similar to buying games, music, and videos – therefore Apple is entitled to a 30 percent cut of every transaction.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The annoyance stems from the way the tipping culture is viewed in China. Chinese app developers see tipping as fundamentally different from in-app purchases because users only tip voluntarily as a mark of appreciation when they consume content.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It sounds kind of like Apple asking for a cut of every PayPal transaction that’s initiated through an app. That really doesn’t make much sense.<\/p>\n

The promise of in-app purchase was that it was supposed to make purchases uniformly easy for the customer. Instead, Apple’s insistence on 30% is degrading the user experience (e.g. Kindle) and encouraging developers to complicate their apps to route around the fee. And if Tencent doesn’t back down—and I don’t see why they would—this could really hurt iOS in China. Hopefully this spat will trigger a rethinking of Apple’s policies.<\/p>\n

Previously: Apple’s China Problem: WeChat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update (2017-05-19): See also: Ben Thompson<\/a>, John Bergmayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2017-07-20): Emma Lee<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Apple is planning to remove its controversial App Store policy of taking a 30 percent cut on tipping from users to content creators in China, local media The Paper is reporting<\/a> (in Chinese), citing several sources they identified as execs at Chinese internet firms. Several game developers also got wind of Apple’s plan to change its tipping policies, the report noted.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Hardwick: Apple has told several Chinese social networking apps to disable their “tip” functions to comply with App Store rules, according to executives at WeChat and other companies. The tip functions in Chinese messaging platforms are free to use and allow people to send authors and other content creators monetary tips through transfers to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[91,1547,522,31,1380,26,1371],"class_list":["post-18028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-appstore","tag-china","tag-inapppurchase","tag-ios","tag-ios-10","tag-iosapp","tag-wechat"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18028"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18406,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18028\/revisions\/18406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}