Bloomberg News reportedSince May this year, Apple has continued to put pressure on Chinese companies including ByteDance and Tencent, asking them to avoid directing users to external third-party payment systems to complete their purchases.
In order to further put pressure on ByteDance and Tencent, Apple even threatened to refuse subsequent updates to their application services. Since these companies usually create a huge market ecosystem with their application services, if they face Apple's restrictions on subsequent updates of their application services, it will cause a significant impact. Therefore, most of them will comply with Apple's requirements and make adjustments.
However, Apple has further asked these companies to remove any methods that may allow users to bypass Apple's payment system. For example, it requires Tencent to prohibit content providers from directly directing users to external third-party payment systems in games such as WeChat. However, this will affect Tencent's large-scale game content revenue, so Tencent has not yet complied with Apple's requirements to make adjustments.
ByteDance is also facing the same pressure, especially since its TikTok app currently has a very large user base in China. If any consumption within the service must be combined with Apple's in-app purchases and the 30% profit-sharing mechanism, its revenue will also be significantly affected.
Although iPhone sales in the Chinese market are still huge, as Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Honor, Huawei, and OnePlus have occupied the majority of the Chinese mobile phone market in recent years, Tencent and ByteDance may choose to compete with Apple in the Chinese market after weighing their interests in the future, which will in turn affect Apple's revenue in the Chinese market.
Apple responded by emphasizing that its operating policies require that all digital goods sold on its products must be completed through its payment system, and the review team can reject application service submissions that violate relevant policies.
In a similar situation, Apple is currently clashing with Epic Games over its in-app purchase policy. Epic Games believes that Apple's greedy demand for sales commissions will affect the industry's revenue and subsequent innovation. However, Apple argues that it provides a service platform and promotional resources, so it is reasonable to charge commissions as platform maintenance and resource usage fees.
However, in recent developments, the EU has determined that Apple must open up third-party payment channels and must also allow users to obtain application services through third-party software markets. Apple has subsequently adjusted its European market policies under pressure from the new EU law.
