Elon Musk's I'll-do-what-I-want-and-you-have-no-choice-but-to-comply attitude has taken an interesting twist in the past two days. He was quoted saying that he wanted to talk to Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, about lowering App Store fees for creators in the Twitter/X platform who earn money through subscriptions.
This sudden change in demeanor maybe due to the fact that 'X' now has a worthy competitor in Threads, a text-based social media platform started by Meta's Mark Zuckerberg. Musk plans for Apple to get 30 percent of what X keeps on the creator fee rather than the same percentage of the total earning of the creator; potentially asking Apple to take less money.
The first year will be free for everyone. After that 12-month grace period, X will collect 10 percent of a creator's earnings through it. However, it doesn't intend to get fees for creators who earn less than $100,000 annually. That means only people who earn more than $100,000 through X will need to give up part of their earnings.
Apple is a different story. The company earns money through in-app subscription purchases on the X app in the App Store for iOS. The cut for Apple is 30 percent in the first 12 months and 5 percent less in the succeeding years. Musk doesn't like the current setup as Apple takes a cut from every subscriber who pays a creator rather than the total earnings in X.
Apple Isn't Likely to Change Their Policy
Musk may have good intentions for his creators, but it's highly unlikely that Apple will yield to his requests because the Cupertino-based company never makes exceptions for anyone. Just recently, Apple was slapped with an antitrust lawsuit by UK developers because of the 30 percent charge on in-app sales inside the App Store. These developers are claiming that Apple is abusing its dominant position and depriving them of the money that could be better used in R&D to improve app innovation.
Some high-profile companies, such as Spotify and Epic Games have complained against App Store's 30 percent policy for years and Epic currently still has a lawsuit against Apple. The struggle by Elon isn't a new one and more app developers are starting to find their voice and be heard against what they describe as "an unfair tax" collected by Apple just because they control the entire iOS ecosystem.
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Meta has also disagreed with Apple regarding the same 30 percent cut in Facebook subscriptions in the past but Tim Cook never budged. What Facebook did was encourage supporters by subscribing to creators on the web rather than using their iPhone. Interestingly, this may be the same route that X creators need to tell their supporters if Apple says no; and it's very likely they will.
Elon Musk has always been critical of Apple's 30 percent App Store fees, describing it as "definitely not OK" and referring to it as a "30% tax on the internet."
