[awillen]

"The CAT said in its ruling that developers were overcharged by the difference between a 17.5% commission for app purchases and the commission Apple charged, which Kent's lawyers said was usually 30%."

Where does the 17.5% come from? I can't find it here or in the link Reuters article. Is that just the number that the tribunal decided was fair? If so I'd love to read the analysis of how they got there.

[bmandale]

"""

919. The comparators available to us (the Epic Games Store, the Microsoft Store and Steam’s lower headline rate) suggest that the competitive rate of commission would be in the range of 12 to 20%. We do think it is reasonable to make some adjustment to that range to accommodate the points made by Apple about its premium brand, the quality of its offering and its established market position. However, we do not think those would be sufficient to displace the upper end of the range and are likely to operate mainly at the lower end, where the offerings are arguably less attractive to users for those reasons.

920. Applying again an approach of “informed guesswork”, on the basis of the evidence before us, we find that the likely range of Apple’s Commission for iOS app distribution services in the counterfactual is between 15% and 20%. For the purposes of quantifying the overcharge (for both the exclusionary abuses and the excessive and unfair pricing abuse) we will use the mid-point of that range, which is 17.5%.

[awillen]

Thanks for digging that out.

[shuckles]

TLDR: they made it up.

[criddell]

What else would you expect?

It’s from a tribunal. They make judgements.

[shuckles]

Judgment can be grounded in reality or it can be picking a random subrange of a list of somewhat random ranges and then picking a midpoint because why not.

[bondarchuk]

It cannot be grounded in reality precisely because it's a monopoly. The whole point of laws against monopolies is to let the market figure out the fair rate, or to define the "fair" rate as the one that emerges in a competitive market. So by definition of what the whole case is about it is impossible to give a fair rate in this case. If you don't want to be subjected to guesswork, stop being a monopoly and let the market figure it out.

[bmandale]

What would you expect them to do in this case in particular?

[shuckles]

Consider Google Play, for starters.

[IshKebab]

What else would they do?

[mikeiz404]

I haven't dug through the linked documents but it's probably in here some where... https://www.catribunal.org.uk/judgments/14037721-dr-rachael-...