Avid 9to5Mac readers know that it is getting increasingly harder to have a day go by and not come across a post about a new (or old) lawsuit trying to challenge, dismantle, or overturn Apple’s App Store rules. Now, a new book out later this month pieces some of the biggest battles together in one place.
In iWAR: Fortnite, Musk, Spotify and the Siege of Apple, Wall Street Journal business columnist Tim Higgins sets out to tell the story of “how Apple became the world’s most valuable company,” using it as a jumping-off point to explore “the lawmakers and entrepreneurs determined to knock it off its pedestal.”
The book traces Apple’s rise from the pre-App Store days, all the way to the recent __ involving Fortnite and Chinese super app WeChat.
Spotify’s worldwide A/B test to take on Apple
In a recent article for the WSJ, titled “Inside Spotify’s Plot to Take Down Apple,” Higgings adapted an excerpt from the book to recount the early tensions between Apple and Spotify, in a process that included a famously contentious meeting between Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Margrethe Vestager, then head of the European Commission’s antitrust office.
The story also covers how Spotify used its Android app in a global A/B campaign to gather evidence and try to prove in court that Apple’s model wasn’t conducive to fostering the creation of opportunities touted by the company, a pivotal argument in the Swedish platform’s overall case against the App Store rules (a premise which Apple promptly rejected):
Using Spotify’s data, the commission conservatively estimated that Apple’s restrictions were resulting in Spotify losing out on 20% of its in-app users upgrading. Put another way, millions of “users got lost in the subscription process and did not end up subscribing,” and millions more had “an inferior user experience.”
iWAR: Fortnite, Musk, Spotify and the Siege of Apple is available for preorder and it will be released on September 16.
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