Maybe it’s not a good idea to get into a battle with Apple (or Google, for that matter) at a time when the entire business plan to keep Twitter afloat is with the $7.99 Twitter Blue subscription service, which has already taken off. one botched and ill-conceived introduction. It goes without saying that most Twitter users access their feeds through Twitter for Android or Twitter for iPhone. Sometime this week, expect the relaunched Twitter Blue to be available again (September 29th, if Musk gets it right). It’s important to look at some numbers here.
The commission he will have to pay Apple and Google for any transactions made through the app stores for either platform bothers Musk. For the Apple App Store, the discount is 30% for the first year and 15% from the second year. For the Google Play Store, it’s a flat 15% discount from the start. This is, and we have to appreciate both sides of the argument, the fee that tech giants charge to host an app on a platform that is accessible to millions of users and allows for easy payments within the interface. There are inevitable arguments for and against these allegations.
Still, these “cuts” or “charges” won’t disappear overnight. Not something Musk could wish for. Twitter’s latest claims peg daily active users at nearly 250 million, with some fluctuations as expected. Musk would hope that at least 5% of them pay for Twitter Blue. That would be about 12.5 million. We need to multiply this expected subscriber base by $8 per month for a full year.
This means that Apple’s cut for the first year will be $360 million and $180 million from the second year. For Google, it will be $180 million from the first year itself. Those numbers may not be big for Apple or Google in the grand scheme of things. But Musk has to pinch every penny to somehow get the best out of the business, which he admitted to massively overpaying.
Can Twitter and Musk really do without app stores?
It may become a web-only option, similar to how Netflix and Amazon Prime worked with their subscriptions, bypassing Apple and Google’s app restrictions.
But can this scenario work for Twitter?
It could, but it will mean a few extra steps for users to set up a subscription. Unlike Netflix, this could be a problem as more users realize that Twitter may not be a necessity for them. If Twitter’s expected 12.5 million users pay up, that’s nearly $1,200 million a year (before Apple and Google’s share), which Musk can’t afford to compromise — either by making things inconvenient for anyone willing to sign up, or by having a Twitter app. limited to app stores due to questionable content moderation policies.
