Apple, Google’s New App Store Revenue Policy to Affect Only Up to 5 Percent of Their Earnings: Sensor Tower

Apple and Google recently revised its app store revenue policies to favour small and new businesses. However, these changes doesn’t seem have much impact on app store earnings of both the companies, according to new stats from Sensor Tower. The firm has calculated the earnings that the two companies would miss out on, if these new rules were introduced last year. According to Sensor Tower, Apple would have missed out on about 2.7 percent of its earnings, whereas Google would’ve missed out on about 5 percent of its total earnings.

CNBC reported key estimates from Sensor Tower, and the firm suggests that if Google had introduced the 15 percent fee schedule rule for all companies with Google Play revenue up to $1 million (roughly Rs. 7 crores) in 2020, the tech giant would have missed out on $587 million (roughly Rs. 4,260 crores) of earnings last year. This is reported to be just about 5 percent of total Google Play fees, which is totalled to $11.6 billion (roughly Rs. 84,220 crores) for the whole of 2020.

Apple has introduced a similar revision for its App Store earnings, and Sensor Tower estimates that it would have missed out on $595 million (roughly Rs. 4,320 crores) or about 2.7 percent of its estimated $21.7 billion (roughly Rs. 157,560 crores) in App Store fees in 2020.

Most of the revenue that Google and Apple earns are from big app makers who still continue to see a 30 percent revenue cut. The two companies have been facing increasing scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators, and even app developers over their app store rules. Epic Games sued both the companies in the hopes to get some changes, including the ability to process third-party payments.

Google’s new policy for Play Store revenue will go into effect from July 1. Under the new revision, it will charge 15 percent from small apps up to $1 million (roughly Rs. 7.2 crores) in digital sales, after which the revenue cut will be 30 percent. This came after Apple introduced a similar policy that went into effect earlier this year.