Amidst the rising controversies surrounding Twitter, head of Apple’s App Store Phil Schiller has deactivated his Twitter account. This comes in wake of Elon Musk’s statements that the tax on app stores is “too high”. While the $8 blue tick strategy of Twitter has been withdrawn, it is expected to make a comeback on 29 November.
Here are some reasons why Musk could be headed for a revenue war with app stores.
The app story
Musk-owned Tesla has said it doesn’t believe in the concept of apps. Even today, Tesla doesn’t support Android Auto or CarPlay. Tesla seems to believe that its competitors will be giants such as Google and Apple. However, Musk so far is not set on the idea of bringing Android Play to Tesla models.
War over revenues
There is a lot of contemplation that Musk could have a possible standoff with Google and Apple over content and fees. Where Apple charges a 30% cut on subscriptions, Google takes 15% of the subscription fee as its cut. This is a huge source of revenue for both the app stores. However, this could prove to be a challenge for Musk with the layoffs and other cost cutting measures he is implementing at Twitter.
Going off the app radar
Musk has called Google and Apple’s duopoly as a tax on the internet. With this, Twitter might try to do what Spotify has been doing. That is to take website-only subscriptions and not on mobile apps. However, this would have a massacre effect in terms of conversion.
As internet revenues take shape, there is a lot to be seen about how the large companies are going to go into a revenue war.
