Apple has reportedly made as much as $256 million last year from the Netflix app, or more than $21 million per month on average, but that revenue is gone now following news that thestreaming giant has stopped offeringin-app subscription options on iOS devices.
Citing new data from research firmSensor Tower, TechCrunchreportedthat the popular video-streaming service last year handed as much as $256 million in fees to the iPhone maker.
Netflix grossed $853 million in 2018 on the iOS App Store. Based on that figure, Apple’s take would have been around $256 million, the firm said.
To date, the Netflix iOS app has generated more than $1.5 billion through its in-app subscriptions, with Apple’s cut coming in around $450 million-plus.
Before the change, Netflix on iOS was grossing an average of $2.4 million per day in 2018—meaning Apple was making around $700,000 by doing nothing other than allowing Netflix to offer subscriptions in its app.
Here’s Netflix’s gross revenue from the iOS app in the past three years:
Netflix is no longer accepting signups via its iOS app
Removing iTunes billing has let Netflix stop paying Apple’s 15 percent levy and keep all the revenue to itself—small wonderthat the experimentalfeature has now rolled out globally.
But Netlfix is hardly the first major iOS developer to buck against the steep subscription fees charged by the likes of Apple and Google on purchases made from within apps. Developer Epic Games, as an example,has chosen to offerits hit game Fortnite to Android users as a sideloaded app in order to bypass Google Play, citing the “store tax”.
Other app makers have worked around fees by charging 30 percent more for in-app subscriptions versus web subscriptions, such as YouTube. As for Spotify, they’ve killed the option to pay for the Premium service using Apple’s in-app payment system altogether.
