Apple's been busy

Marking and Business in the World

Introduction

    Apple is one of the largest companies in, not just the technology industry, but the entire world. They have recently fallen from the biggest company in the world to the second biggest company only behind Microsoft. Apple has recently been unveiling many new products over recent years such as the Apple Vision Pro, an Apple A.I. and a form of Apple Car.

Apple versus the EU

    Historically, Apple has always taken a 30% cut from all in-app purchases made by using the App Store, which essentially covers all in-app purchases. For every Candy Crush life or Clash of Clan gem you've bought, Apple has taken 30% of that purchase away from the developers. This has been a problem for mobile app developers for a long time but there is no company feeling this cut more than one. Spotify's only major competitor is Apple's own product, Apple Music. So essentially, 30% of all Spotify premium purchases are going towards supporting their direct competitor. So Spotify, along with many other companies who use the App Store, sued Apple in the EU.

    This lawsuit went on for a while which ended with the EU fining Apple 2 billion dollars and told them that they had to allow a function called "sideloading" which is essentially allowing companies to let consumers make in-app purchases without going through the Apple App Store. However, Apple's CEO, Tim Cook did not take this decision lying down. Apple implemented new solutions that essentially followed the law to the exact letter and made the experience for consumers and developers quite painful to leave the app store to make their purchase. Furthermore, they are making sure that selling their items off the app store would cost just as much if not more. 

    It remains to be said what will happen to Apple as far the EU goes. We will have to see if the EU will keep fining them and keep pushing Apple to make reforms. If they choose to let it lie, this entire process will have essentially been for nothing. Finally, this change only effects people in the EU anyways.

Apple's innovations

    Apple's Vision Pro initially caught some steam as the fear of missing out led to a decent amount of sales. However, as the initial heat has died down, many customers have taken a step back in realizing that the initial high price tag of $3500 could have been better spent. This has led to a large scale of returns of the Apple Vision Pro for a variety of reasons. This was due to the high price tag, but also people were reporting headaches and motion sickness from the product. 

    The Apple Car, which burned a 10 billion dollar hole in their pocket, has been officially canceled. They plan on making their impact in the automobile industry with their Apple Car Play software technology. Furthermore, Apple announces that they will be releasing a "futuristic Siri" form of artificial intelligence to compete with the likes of OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. The claim this will release in June so we will have to see how it performs.

Conclusion

    Overall, it seems not much will change in Apple's functions on the App Store, especially in the rest of the world that is not part of the EU. Additionally, their recent innovations have seemed to flop and end up costing them more money. It will be interesting to see how yet another artificial intelligence performs in a market that is already quite saturated.