Apple says all developers treated equally, yet documents show Amazon Prime Video pays half the usual App Store commission

The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook had to testify before Congress on the House Judiciary subcommittee’s investigation into competition in digital marketplaces on Wednesday.

During the proceedings, he insisted that his company treats every developer in the same manner, but the Amazon Prime Video deal does not support his claims. 

As part of the investigation, the court went on to release many pages of documents to show Apple’s alleged monopolistic App Store practices. The investigations refer to an email Jeff Bezos and Eddy Cue in late 2016 which showed that there would be a 15% revenue share for customers that sign up using the Apple Payment service. It would also receive a 15% share of third party Amazon Channels sold through the app. 

Earlier this year, Apple’s profitable relationship Amazon made headlines when the former started promoting the

TV shows and movies through its iOS and tVOs app.

This is not the first instance of this happening. Plenty of high profile apps in Apple’s app store get offered over the top deals that are unavailable to smaller developers, such as relaxing sandbox restrictions to allow Microsoft to bring the office suite to the Mac App Store. 

This just goes to show that in the real world every developer is not treated the same.

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