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2021-09-14

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Apple App Store: The Tide Is Turning<blockquote>苹果应用商店：潮流正在转向</blockquote>

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{"i18n":{"language":"zh_CN"},"detailType":1,"isChannel":false,"data":{"magic":2,"id":886111104,"tweetId":"886111104","gmtCreate":1631574881408,"gmtModify":1631890078406,"author":{"id":4090835245062940,"idStr":"4090835245062940","authorId":4090835245062940,"authorIdStr":"4090835245062940","name":"Xiaobaibaix","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/19263ccc92eb63259fac52b84116dbc7","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":12,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":28,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body>Go appleee</body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body>Go appleee</body></html>","text":"Go appleee","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/886111104","repostId":1171919128,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1171919128","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1631547161,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1171919128?lang=zh_CN&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-13 23:32","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple App Store: The Tide Is Turning<blockquote>苹果应用商店：潮流正在转向</blockquote>","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1171919128","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nA US Federal District Court judge has ruled mostly in Apple’s favor in their case with Epic","content":"Summary<blockquote>总结</blockquote> <ul> <li>A US Federal District Court judge has ruled mostly in Apple’s favor in their case with Epic Games.</li> <li>Despite that, and in conjunction with a recent settlement with Japanese regulators, Apple will be getting rid of their anti-steering rule. This is a bigger change than people think.</li> <li>The threat to Apple doesn't end with the Epic trial. There are bigger threats coming from the executive and legislative branches in the US, and regulators in Europe and Asia.</li> </ul> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/323e8503a813d4996ee819f5591992b8\" tg-width=\"1536\" tg-height=\"1024\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News<blockquote><ul><li>美国联邦地区法院法官在Epic Games的案件中做出了对苹果有利的裁决。</li><li>尽管如此，加上最近与日本监管机构达成的和解，苹果将取消他们的反转向规则。这是一个比人们想象的更大的变化。</li><li>对苹果的威胁并没有随着史诗般的审判而结束。更大的威胁来自美国的行政和立法部门，以及欧洲和亚洲的监管机构。</li></ul>奇普·索莫德维拉/盖蒂图片社新闻</blockquote> It Does Not End Here<blockquote>它并没有就此结束</blockquote> For&nbsp;some time now, I&nbsp;have been warning&nbsp;that&nbsp;antitrust law was about to change, and these changes would not be favorable to Apple(NASDAQ:AAPL), and that investors need to take these threats seriously. In every one of these attempts, I was rebuffed in the comments by many Apple shareholders telling me that these fears and warnings were overblown. “Long and strong AAPL!” cheerleading seems to be popular.Confirmation bias&nbsp;is a strong thing, and you should fight it every single day.<blockquote>一段时间以来，我一直警告反垄断法即将发生变化，这些变化对苹果（纳斯达克股票代码：AAPL）不利，投资者需要认真对待这些威胁。在每一次尝试中，我都遭到了许多苹果股东的拒绝，他们告诉我这些担忧和警告被夸大了。“长而强的AAPL！”啦啦队似乎很受欢迎。确认偏见是一种强烈的东西，你应该每天都与之斗争。</blockquote> My last attempt was&nbsp;less than two weeks ago, and I was similarly dismissed, and even accused of being a short-selling tout to boot. That last suggestion is pretty funny to anyone who has had to listen to me drone on about Apple stock the last 16 years. The consequence of those 16 years is that I have a lot of Apple stock, so I take things like this very seriously.<blockquote>我最后一次尝试是在不到两周前，我同样被驳回，甚至被指责为卖空者。对于那些在过去16年里不得不听我喋喋不休地谈论苹果股票的人来说，最后一个建议非常有趣。那16年的后果是我有很多苹果的股票，所以我非常认真地对待这样的事情。</blockquote> Friday’s decision in Epic v. Apple had one part very bad news for Apple, but mostly a rejection of Epic’s main claim — that iOS is a market unto itself. But the bigger threat continues to be from Congress, where they can change the law in a single session. The House has already passed several bipartisan bills through committee, and three of them seem to have pretty wide support with the rest of the House. A narrower, but just as damaging companion bill is about to start working its way through the Senate. Keep your eyes on Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mike Lee of Utah.<blockquote>周五Epic诉苹果案的判决对苹果来说有一部分是非常坏的消息，但主要是拒绝了Epic的主要主张——iOS本身就是一个市场。但更大的威胁仍然来自国会，他们可以在一次会议中改变法律。众议院已经通过了几项两党法案，其中三项似乎得到了众议院其他成员的广泛支持。一项范围更窄但同样具有破坏性的配套法案即将开始在参议院通过。请关注明尼苏达州的艾米·克洛布查尔和犹他州的李政颖。</blockquote> Then we have regulatory action in the EU, Apple’s second most important region, where antitrust enforcers are siding with Spotify(NYSE:SPOT)in their dispute over in-app payments. Apple has already settled with Japan over their anti-steering rules. South Korea is forcing Apple and Google(NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG)to allow third-party in-app payments. China is a black hole of regulatory mystery.<blockquote>然后，我们在苹果第二重要地区欧盟采取了监管行动，那里的反垄断执法人员在应用内支付纠纷中站在Spotify（纽约证券交易所股票代码：SPOT）一边。苹果已经就日本的反转向规则与日本达成和解。南韩正在迫使苹果和谷歌（纳斯达克：GOOGL）（纳斯达克：GOOG）允许第三方应用内支付。中国是一个监管神秘的黑洞。</blockquote> The tide is turning on Apple on this issue. If you think this begins and ends with the Epic case, you haven’t been paying attention.<blockquote>在这个问题上，潮流正在转向苹果。如果你认为这是以史诗般的案件开始和结束的，那你就没有注意到。</blockquote> Right now the threat is confined to App Store, but this is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. This new antitrust movement may come for other parts of Apple, like the other pillar of their fast-growing Services segment, AppleCare, and even dig deeper into the way Apple likes to do business.<blockquote>目前威胁仅局限于App Store，但是这是开始的结束，而非结束的开始。这场新的反垄断运动可能会降临到苹果的其他部门，比如他们快速增长的服务部门的另一个支柱AppleCare，甚至更深入地挖掘苹果喜欢的做生意方式。</blockquote> What The Ruling Says<blockquote>裁决内容</blockquote> Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers hewed very closely to existing law, because that’s what usually happens in District Court, the lowest level of the federal system. She mostly had bad news for Epic, and targeted bad news for Apple.<blockquote>伊冯娜·冈萨雷斯·罗杰斯法官非常严格地遵守现有法律，因为这通常是联邦系统最低级别的地区法院发生的事情。她主要是给Epic带来坏消息，并针对苹果带来坏消息。</blockquote> The case rested on how the court defined the “relevant market” in question. Epic wanted it to be iOS, a market unto itself because of the high walls Apple builds around the ecosystem. Judge Rogers rejected that novel claim pretty handily. But she also rejected Apple’s definition: all gaming transactions, including PCs and consoles. She settled on mobile gaming transactions, so essentially the iOS-Android duopoly of mobile gaming transactions.<blockquote>该案取决于法院如何定义所讨论的“相关市场”。Epic希望它成为iOS，一个独立的市场，因为苹果在生态系统周围筑起了高墙。罗杰斯法官轻而易举地驳回了这一新颖的主张。但她也拒绝了苹果的定义：所有游戏交易，包括PC和主机。她选择了移动游戏交易，所以本质上是移动游戏交易的iOS和Android双头垄断。</blockquote> Here is the meat of the decision that follows from that:<blockquote>以下是由此得出的决定的实质：</blockquote> Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws. While the Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct. Success is not illegal… Nonetheless, the trial did show that Apple is engaging in anticompetitive conduct under California’s competition laws. The Court concludes that Apple’s anti-steering provisions hide critical information from consumers and illegally stifle consumer choice. When coupled with Apple’s incipient antitrust violations, these anti-steering provisions are anticompetitive and a nationwide remedy to eliminate those provisions is warranted. The most important thing to note here is that the problem for Apple is California law, not federal law. Federal law changing is where the real threat remains, and we are already well into that process.<blockquote>鉴于审判记录，法院无法最终得出结论，根据联邦或州反垄断法，苹果是垄断者。虽然法院发现苹果享有超过55%的可观市场份额和极高的利润率，但仅凭这些因素并不表明存在反垄断行为。成功并不违法……尽管如此，审判确实表明苹果参与了加州竞争法下的反竞争行为。法院的结论是，苹果的反转向条款向消费者隐瞒了关键信息，非法扼杀了消费者的选择。再加上苹果初期的反垄断违规行为，这些反转向条款是反竞争的，有必要在全国范围内采取补救措施来消除这些条款。这里最需要注意的是，苹果的问题是加州法律，而不是联邦法律。联邦法律的改变是真正的威胁所在，我们已经进入了这个过程。</blockquote> Judge Rogers ruled that Apple has to get rid of their anti-steering rules. App developers will now be allowed to inform users of less expensive options on their website, with a link. We’ll talk about the implications in a moment. Apple charges developers 30% for in-app payments, and the first year of in-app subscriptions (15% thereafter). In-app payments and subscriptions are substantially where all of App Store revenue comes from, about 28% of the Services segment and 5.4% of all revenue in calendar 2020.<blockquote>Rogers法官裁定苹果必须取消他们的反转向规则。应用开发者现在将被允许在他们的网站上通过链接通知用户更便宜的选项。我们一会儿会谈到其中的含义。苹果向开发者收取30%的应用内支付费用，以及第一年的应用内订阅费用（此后收取15%）。应用内支付和订阅基本上是App Store所有收入的来源，约占服务部门的28%，占2020年所有收入的5.4%。</blockquote> Also, in the category of rounding errors, Epic has to pay Apple the $3.6 million they owe them when they breached their contract. That’s about 0.001% of Apple’s 2021 top line.<blockquote>此外，在舍入错误类别中，Epic必须向苹果支付他们违反合同时欠他们的360万美元。这约占苹果2021年营收的0.001%。</blockquote> Epic’s Game<blockquote>史诗的游戏</blockquote> If you read&nbsp;my first article&nbsp;about the trial from when the pre-trial filings dropped, you may notice that I was a bit confused about what precisely Epic’s game was here. The foundation of their entire argument — that iOS was a market unto itself — was novel, to say the least. At least one of their lawyers must have informed them of the low likelihood of success on their main claims. Moreover, they burned a lot of pages on arguments not central to their case, but seem more geared towards tarnishing Apple’s reputation.<blockquote>如果你读了我的第一篇关于预审文件撤销时的审判文章，你可能会注意到我对Epic的游戏到底是什么有点困惑。至少可以说，他们整个论点的基础——iOS本身就是一个市场——是新颖的。至少有一名律师必须告知他们主要索赔成功的可能性很低。此外，他们烧毁了很多页的论点，这些论点与他们的案件无关，但似乎更倾向于玷污苹果的声誉。</blockquote> My current understanding is that this case was a publicity stunt. What’s more, it worked. The point was to get this issue into the public conversation. Here I am writing about it, and here you are reading about it. But more importantly, the tide is turning in Washington, and I think the issues raised by this trial have accelerated that.<blockquote>我目前的理解是，这个案子是一个宣传噱头。更重要的是，它起作用了。重点是让这个问题进入公众对话。我在这里写它，你在这里读到它。但更重要的是，华盛顿的潮流正在发生转变，我认为这次审判提出的问题加速了这一点。</blockquote> The Anti-Steering Rule<blockquote>反转向规则</blockquote> Like many of the App Store rules, the anti-steering rule was part of a multi-year whack-a-mole process where developers tried to find ways to cut out Apple, and Apple closed those holes. Apple fought very hard to keep this rule, but now seems to be capitulating. They settled with Japanese regulators recently on the anti-steering rules as it applied to media subscription apps, and applied the settlement to the rest of the world as well, maybe in anticipation of this ruling. With the Epic ruling, the anti-steering rule is gone.<blockquote>与许多App Store规则一样，反转向规则是多年打地鼠过程的一部分，开发者试图找到切断苹果的方法，苹果填补了这些漏洞。苹果非常努力地维护这一规则，但现在似乎投降了。他们最近与日本监管机构就适用于媒体订阅应用程序的反转向规则达成了和解，并将和解协议也适用于世界其他地区，也许是对这一裁决的预期。随着史诗般的裁决，反转向规则消失了。</blockquote> When a game developer like Epic sells their virtual currency on the App Store, they have a 30% payment fee. When they make the same transaction on their website, it is probably under 3%. This was always what this was about. Epic wanted to have their own in-app payment system to supersede Apple’s, without the friction of sending people to the website. Judge Rogers rejected that, but gave Epic a partial victory by banning Apple’s anti-steering rules.<blockquote>当像Epic这样的游戏开发商在App Store上出售他们的虚拟货币时，他们有30%的支付费用。当他们在自己的网站上进行同样的交易时，大概在3%以下。这一直都是为了这个。Epic希望拥有自己的应用内支付系统来取代苹果的支付系统，而不会出现将人们送到网站的摩擦。Rogers法官驳回了这一要求，但通过禁止苹果的反转向规则，Epic获得了部分胜利。</blockquote> The anti-steering rules prevented app developers from having text and links to their own much less expensive in-app payments or subscriptions on their websites. This is a real loss for Apple, and puts the whole structure of the two most lucrative payment methods in the App Store at risk.<blockquote>反转向规则阻止应用程序开发者在其网站上发布文本和链接到他们自己便宜得多的应用内支付或订阅。这对苹果来说是一个真正的损失，并将App Store中最赚钱的两种支付方式的整个结构置于危险之中。</blockquote> Let’s say a gaming company pays a 2.5% processing fee on their website. That means they have 27.5 percentage points of marketing to play with. They could give that entire 27.5% to users in the form of a rebate or freebies. It certainly increases friction to have to leave a game you're having fun with, but if there is a big, friendly, dark-patterned button that says “Want free money?” I think a lot of people would tap that button. What’s more, they get to book the same amount in revenue, and stick the cost down in sales and marketing.<blockquote>假设一家游戏公司在其网站上支付2.5%的处理费。这意味着他们有27.5个百分点的营销空间可以利用。他们可以以折扣或免费赠品的形式给用户全部27.5%。不得不离开一个你正在享受的游戏肯定会增加摩擦，但是如果有一个大的、友好的、深色图案的按钮写着“想要免费的钱吗？”我想很多人会点击那个按钮。更重要的是，他们可以记录相同金额的收入，并在销售和营销方面降低成本。</blockquote> That’s just one example of how companies may decide to go with this. That’s a lot of margin to play with. The reason Apple had this rule in the first place is that they feared someone would find the magic formula that would provide more revenue by eschewing in-app payments altogether, and everyone else would copy them. They had fought very hard to keep this rule for a reason.<blockquote>这只是公司可能决定采取这种做法的一个例子。这是一个很大的空间。苹果最初制定这条规则的原因是，他们担心有人会找到一个神奇的公式，通过完全避免应用内支付来提供更多收入，而其他人都会效仿他们。他们努力维护这条规则是有原因的。</blockquote> Just after the news broke, a friend who knows&nbsp;I own both stocks&nbsp;trolled me with this Bloomberg Terminal screenshot:<blockquote>消息传出后，一位知道我拥有这两只股票的朋友用这张彭博终端截图向我进行了攻击：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/78570d7ae73401a933b2359f3dcd47da\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"281\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><blockquote></blockquote> Roblox(NYSE:RBLX)is a pure-play mobile gaming company. The vast majority of their revenues come from in-app payments from iOS and Android, the rest from their website sales. Their cost-of-revenues almost all goes to Apple and Google. In the TTM, they had a 74.4% gross margin. If they pay a 2.5% processing fee for website sales, that means 84% of their transaction value was through iOS and Android. If they could get that to 50-50, that would raise all their margins down to EBT by 10 percentage points. If they could get to 73% of sales on the website, they would have a 90% gross margin.<blockquote>Roblox（纽约证券交易所股票代码：RBLX）是一家纯粹的移动游戏公司。他们的绝大多数收入来自iOS和Android的应用内支付，其余来自网站销售。他们的收入成本几乎全部归苹果和谷歌所有。在TTM，他们的毛利率为74.4%。如果他们为网站销售支付2.5%的处理费，这意味着他们84%的交易价值是通过iOS和Android进行的。如果他们能够将这一比例提高到50-50，那么他们在EBT的所有利润率将提高10个百分点。如果他们能在网站上获得73%的销售额，他们将有90%的毛利率。</blockquote> There is a lot of money at stake, and a huge incentive for gaming and subscription media companies to figure out how to thread this needle. And that’s all in the absence of further action by the other two branches of government.<blockquote>这关系到大量的资金，游戏和订阅媒体公司也有巨大的动力去想办法解决这个问题。这一切都是在其他两个政府部门没有采取进一步行动的情况下发生的。</blockquote> The Executive Branch<blockquote>行政部门</blockquote> This is a good place to discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the new antitrust movement, because two of its leaders now work in the Biden administration. The movement is sometimes referred to as the “neo-Brandeis” movement after Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, because it harkens back to a much earlier era of antitrust enforcement that drastically changed in the 1980s.<blockquote>这是讨论新反垄断运动理论基础的好地方，因为其两位领导人现在在拜登政府工作。这场运动有时被称为“新布兰代斯”运动，以最高法院大法官路易斯·布兰代斯的名字命名，因为它可以追溯到更早的反垄断执法时代，该时代在20世纪80年代发生了巨大变化。</blockquote> In 1978, Robert Bork (yes,that Robert Bork) wrote a very influential book called&nbsp;The Antitrust Paradox. His theory urged a refocusing of enforcement away from competition, and towards consumer benefit as the main test. He argued that antitrust enforcement was propping up smaller, less efficient companies to the detriment of the economy.<blockquote>1978年，罗伯特·博克（没错，就是那个罗伯特·博克）写了一本非常有影响力的书，叫做反垄断悖论他的理论敦促将执法重点从竞争转向消费者利益作为主要检验标准。他认为，反垄断执法正在支撑规模较小、效率较低的公司，损害了经济。</blockquote> The 1982 AT&amp;T breakup consent decree became the prototype for the new enforcement. By controlling local and long distance telecommunication, as well as the equipment, AT&amp;T had been underinvesting and overcharging for decades. Their breakup brought an explosion of investment into telecommunications, and brought down prices quickly for landline service and equipment. That became the limit of antitrust enforcement.<blockquote>1982年美国电话电报公司分手同意法令成为新执法的原型。通过控制本地和长途电信以及设备，美国电话电报公司几十年来一直投资不足，收费过高。他们的分手带来了电信投资的爆炸式增长，并迅速降低了固定电话服务和设备的价格。这成为反垄断执法的极限。</blockquote> But the focus on consumer benefit has affected competition, and that’s what the neo-Brandeis movement hopes to change. They want antitrust enforcement to return to the way it was a century ago, with more of a focus on how large companies affect competition. Lina Khan, a law professor at Columbia, now runs the FTC, the primary antitrust enforcer in the federal government. Her 2017 law review article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” was the spark that lit this fire. Her colleague at Columbia Law, Tim Wu, is also one of the leaders of this movement. He is a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, and his fingerprints are all over&nbsp;the July competition executive order.<blockquote>但是对消费者利益的关注影响了竞争，这就是新布兰代斯运动希望改变的。他们希望反垄断执法回到一个世纪前的样子，更多地关注大公司如何影响竞争。哥伦比亚大学法学教授莉娜·汗(Lina Khan)现在负责联邦政府主要的反垄断执法机构联邦贸易委员会(FTC)。她2017年的法律评论文章《亚马逊的反垄断悖论》是点燃这场大火的火花。她在哥伦比亚法学院的同事蒂姆·吴也是这场运动的领导者之一。他是白宫经济顾问委员会的成员，7月份的竞争行政命令上到处都是他的指纹。</blockquote> The order was very wide ranging, with 72 initiatives covering 14 departments and agencies. Most of it does not relate to Apple, but it gives you an idea of the wide breadth of the order. As it relates to Apple:<blockquote>该命令范围非常广泛，有72项举措，涵盖14个部门和机构。它的大部分与苹果无关，但它让你对秩序的广度有所了解。就苹果而言：</blockquote> <ul> <li>Right-to-repair is a huge threat to the other pillar of Services, AppleCare, which I estimate at 25%-30% of the segment. But more than that, it would change the way Apple makes devices. Apple squeezes out efficiency gains by attaching pooled memory directly to the main processor die, and by soldering storage into the motherboard. Both of these would likely be prohibited to them, and the devices would suffer.</li> <li>The FTC is two months into a yearlong frisk of the mobile app ecosystem. Based on previous writings, Lina Khan will likely recommend third party app stores, “sideloading” directly from the web, and an end to the in-app payments monopoly.</li> </ul> Executive branch action is always subject to court challenges, and they can take very long to implement. But Congress can change the law in a single session. And they are already into that process.<blockquote><ul><li>维修权对服务的另一个支柱AppleCare来说是一个巨大的威胁，我估计AppleCare占该细分市场的25%-30%。但更重要的是，它将改变苹果制造设备的方式。苹果通过将池内存直接连接到主处理器芯片，以及将存储焊接到主板来挤出效率增益。这两个都可能被禁止，设备也会受到影响。</li><li>联邦贸易委员会对移动应用生态系统长达一年的搜查已经进行了两个月。根据之前的著作，Lina Khan可能会推荐第三方应用商店，直接从网络“侧装”，并结束应用内支付垄断。</li></ul>行政部门的行动总是受到法院的质疑，而且可能需要很长时间才能实施。但是国会可以在一届会议上改变法律。他们已经进入了这个过程。</blockquote> The Legislative Branch<blockquote>立法部门</blockquote> Since there are two houses of Congress, this issue is off on two tracks. The House Judiciary Committee recently passed a suite of bipartisan bills. Of the ones that I think have a good likelihood of passing the full House, here’s how it affects Apple:<blockquote>由于国会有两院，这个问题在两条轨道上。众议院司法委员会最近通过了一系列两党法案。在我认为很有可能获得全院通过的法案中，以下是它对苹果的影响：</blockquote> They would be required to allow third party app stores, sideloading, and third party payments in the Apple App Store.<blockquote>他们将被要求允许苹果应用商店中的第三方应用商店、侧装和第三方支付。</blockquote> Restricting Apple’s ability to acquire smaller companies. In the past 6 years, Apple has bought around 100 companies, which works out to about one every three weeks on average. It looks like they had been accelerating since fiscal 2018, but then abruptly stopped in fiscal 2021. The reason is the new leader of the FTC.<blockquote>限制苹果收购小公司的能力。在过去的6年里，苹果收购了大约100家公司，平均每三周就收购一家。看起来他们自2018财年以来一直在加速，但在2021财年突然停止。原因是FTC的新领导人。</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a2fc9a2578663cc746fdb19ca19dea4c\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"417\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Data by YCharts<blockquote>数据来自YCharts</blockquote> The big bulge you see there in 2014 is the Beats acquisition at $3 billion, which remains the exception. Otherwise, Apple buys very small companies for tens or hundreds of millions, usually shuts down any products they may have, and absorbs the talent and IP into Apple proper. Apple’s chip design unit, a cornerstone of their current success, began this way in 2008.<blockquote>你在2014年看到的最大增长是以30亿美元收购Beats，这仍然是个例外。否则，苹果会花数千万或数亿美元收购非常小的公司，通常会关闭他们可能拥有的任何产品，并将人才和知识产权吸收到苹果本土。苹果的芯片设计部门是他们目前成功的基石，2008年就是这样开始的。</blockquote> No more private APIs.This would mean everything, like the Apple Pay-enabling NFC chip, would be open to competitors.<blockquote>不再有私有API。这意味着一切，比如支持苹果支付的NFC芯片，都将向竞争对手开放。</blockquote> No more discriminatory rules.Apple doesn’t force real-world product and service providers like Uber(NYSE:UBER)to use in-app payments. Apple would either have to try and get Uber to pay them 30%, or drop the requirement altogether.<blockquote>不再有歧视性的规则。苹果不会强迫Uber（纽约证券交易所股票代码：UBER）等现实世界的产品和服务提供商使用应用内支付。苹果要么试图让优步向他们支付30%的费用，要么完全放弃这一要求。</blockquote> The end of the Google search deal.Google currently pays Apple a purported $12 billion a year to make Google the default search engine on iOS. This cash goes directly to EBT.<blockquote>谷歌搜索交易的结束。谷歌目前据称每年向苹果支付120亿美元，以使谷歌成为iOS上的默认搜索引擎。这笔现金直接流向EBT。</blockquote> They would have to expose more user data to developers.<blockquote>他们将不得不向开发者公开更多的用户数据。</blockquote> Formalizing the anti-steering decision.<blockquote>正式确定反转向决策。</blockquote> Anti-retaliation provision.If these bills were law, Epic would still be on the App Store while they sued Apple.<blockquote>反报复条款。如果这些法案成为法律，当他们起诉苹果时，Epic仍将在App Store上。</blockquote> After the House is done wrangling over budget reconciliation, I think these bills will hit the House floor this fall or winter, and I think that they have a high likelihood of passing in something like their current form.<blockquote>在众议院结束关于预算协调的争论后，我认为这些法案将在今年秋天或冬天提交众议院，我认为它们很有可能以目前的形式获得通过。</blockquote> But bills also have to clear the Senate, and they move slower. Things are just getting started there. The big movers in the Senate are Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mike Lee of Utah. Klobuchar has&nbsp;written a long book&nbsp;on the subject, and it is not friendly towards Apple. She has also authored a new bill, Open App Markets Act. It is more narrow than the House suite, but not by much. It would still force Apple to allow third party app stores, sideloading, and third party in-app payments. They would also have to get rid of their private APIs. The bill is narrower than the House suite, and less of a threat to Apple, but still would mean the end of App Store as a driver of growth.The Senate bill is the better outcome for Apple, and it is still terrible.<blockquote>但法案也必须通过参议院，而且进展较慢。那里的事情才刚刚开始。参议院的大推动者是明尼苏达州的艾米·克洛布查尔和犹他州的李政颖。Klobuchar就这个问题写了一本长书，它对苹果并不友好。她还起草了一项新法案《开放应用市场法案》。它比房子套房窄，但也窄不了多少。它仍将迫使苹果允许第三方应用商店、侧装和第三方应用内支付。他们还必须摆脱他们的私有API。该法案比众议院套房更窄，对苹果的威胁也更小，但仍意味着App Store作为增长驱动力的终结。参议院的法案对苹果来说是更好的结果，但仍然很糟糕。</blockquote> I believe that we will see something pass before the next Presidential election, or even in this Congressional session. The best Apple shareholders can hope for is that the final bill gets watered down considerably.<blockquote>我相信，在下届总统选举之前，甚至在本届国会会议上，我们会看到一些事情通过。苹果股东最大的希望就是最终法案被大幅淡化。</blockquote> Outside The US<blockquote>美国境外</blockquote> This is in no way limited to the US. We already discussed the Japanese settlement, and South Korea is forcing Apple and Google to allow third party in-app payments. The case that is farthest along in the EU is Spotify’s, which would force Apple to not charge fees to competing services, so that means music, podcasts, games, video and fitness.<blockquote>这绝不仅限于美国。我们已经讨论了日本的和解，南韩正在迫使苹果和谷歌允许第三方应用内支付。欧盟进展最快的案例是Spotify，这将迫使苹果不向竞争服务收费，因此这意味着音乐、播客、游戏、视频和健身。</blockquote> The Chinese Communist Party remains the&nbsp;second biggest tail risk in the world&nbsp;after climate change. Apple’s regulatory risk there is uniquely high, both on the supply and demand sides. Apple has already given into them by not providing their Chinese customers with the same level of privacy as everyone else. With the mood in China right now, who knows where that goes.<blockquote>中国共产党仍然是仅次于气候变化的世界第二大尾部风险。无论是在供应还是需求方面，苹果的监管风险都非常高。苹果已经屈服于他们，没有向他们的中国客户提供和其他人一样的隐私水平。以中国现在的情绪，谁知道会走向何方。</blockquote> What Losing Control Of App Store Looks Like<blockquote>失去对App Store的控制是什么样子</blockquote> Stone Fox Capital here at Seeking Alpha is&nbsp;out with an article&nbsp;pivoting off Katy Huberty's estimation of a 2% earnings loss if the top 20 apps on the App Store were able to eschew in-app payments. Stone Fox would also like you to care about that seemingly small number:<blockquote>Seeking Alpha的Stone Fox Capital发表了一篇文章，反驳了Katy Huberty的估计，如果App Store上排名前20的应用程序能够避免应用内支付，收益将损失2%。石狐也希望大家关心一下这个看似很小的数字：</blockquote> Apple won most of their legal case with Epic Games based on the ruling announced on September 10, but the tech giant lost the ultimate battle. The stock remains priced for perfection while the company continues to have growth paths chipped away from the business. My last article on this subject was called “Chipping Away at App Store.” This is what is happening and the trend is now clear. There is a mood globally to take Apple down a peg, and it is happening too slowly for many people to realize it is happening.<blockquote>根据9月10日宣布的裁决，苹果赢得了与Epic Games的大部分法律诉讼，但这家科技巨头输掉了最终的战斗。该股的定价仍然是完美的，而该公司的增长道路继续从业务中被削弱。我上一篇关于这个主题的文章叫做“在App Store上削足适履”。这就是正在发生的事情，趋势现在很明显。全球都有一种降低苹果汇率的情绪，但这种情绪发生得太慢，许多人都没有意识到它正在发生。</blockquote> My own way of modeling the worst case is through my DCF model. It’s modeled as a 25% hit to Services in the first year, with services gross margin reduced from 68% to 65%, followed by a slightly increased growth rate in the segment because of composition effects — the rest of Services grows faster than App Store. I used to model that happening in fiscal 2024, but I have moved that up to fiscal 2023, beginning less than 13 months from now.<blockquote>我自己对最坏情况建模的方法是通过我的DCF模型。它的模型是第一年服务受到25%的打击，服务毛利率从68%下降到65%，随后由于构成效应，该细分市场的增长率略有上升——其余服务的增长速度快于App Store。我曾经对2024财年发生的情况进行建模，但我已将其提前到2023财年，从现在开始不到13个月。</blockquote> Here is the effect on fair value on my base case:<blockquote>以下是我的基本案例对公允价值的影响：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/94b635fe7a2473aafe36bd095a1206b6\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"352\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><blockquote></blockquote> Even with the very slow start for the reason Stone Fox says — the share price has gotten way out ahead of cash flows — my base case still shows an 11% CAGR in fair value through the end of fiscal 2025. The App Store collapse takes that down to an 8% CAGR, 12% lower by 2025.<blockquote>尽管由于Stone Fox所说的原因，起步非常缓慢——股价已经远远领先于现金流——但我的基本假设仍然显示，到2025财年末，公允价值复合年增长率为11%。App Store的倒闭使复合年增长率降至8%，到2025年将下降12%。</blockquote> Circling back, Stone Fox puts a button on this more succinctly than I can:<blockquote>回头，石狐比我更简洁地按下了一个按钮：</blockquote> The key investor takeaway is that Apple has a bright future. The company will continue generating profits with operating cash flows topping $100 billion annually, but the tech giant will struggle to generate the growth needed to warrant the current stock price. The 2% hit to earnings might not seem meaningful, but the amount is very harmful to a stock priced for perfection. How To Take This Seriously<blockquote>投资者的主要收获是苹果拥有光明的未来。该公司将继续创造利润，每年运营现金流超过1000亿美元，但这家科技巨头将难以实现维持当前股价所需的增长。盈利2%的打击似乎没有意义，但这个数额对于定价完美的股票来说是非常有害的。如何认真对待这个</blockquote> In my last article on this subject, someone cheekily replied in the comments, “‘Please take this seriously.’ What does that even mean?” That’s a good question. The first part of the answer is to stop pretending it’s not happening.<blockquote>在我关于这个主题的上一篇文章中，有人在评论中厚颜无耻地回答说：“‘请认真对待这件事。’这到底是什么意思？”这是个好问题。答案的第一部分是不要假装它没有发生。</blockquote> “If your time horizon is short, now is a good time to take profits.” I have been using that phrase frequently since Apple hit $140. The last chart just formalizes it with math, but my opinion is that Apple will remain range-bound for some time, between $125 and $155, roughly. I still mean it: if your time horizon is short, now is a good time to take profits.<blockquote>“如果你的时间范围很短，现在是获利了结的好时机。”自从苹果股价达到140美元以来，我就经常使用这个短语。最后一张图表只是用数学将其形式化，但我的观点是苹果将在一段时间内保持区间波动，大约在125美元到155美元之间。我还是这个意思：如果你的时间范围很短，现在是获利了结的好时机。</blockquote> But I also believe that no other company is as prepared for the future of technology, regardless of what that brings. That is a&nbsp;far longer discussion. I have been buying Apple shares on the dip since 2005, which is two splits ago. My last buy was in January 2019, when Apple reported that they would miss guidance for the first time in many years. At the time, the commentariat was telling me that Apple’s best days were behind them. I tried to explain that Apple was in a transitional phase, part of a strategy they launched around 2015 to focus more on the growth of the iPhone user base than sales. The strategy would pay off soon, I predicted, and it did in fiscal 2021. That seems like a very long time ago now.<blockquote>但我也相信，没有其他公司为技术的未来做好了准备，无论它会带来什么。这是一个长得多的讨论。自2005年以来，我一直在逢低买入苹果股票，这是两次拆分前。我最后一次购买是在2019年1月，当时苹果报告称他们将多年来首次错过指导。当时，评论员告诉我，苹果最好的日子已经过去了。我试图解释说，苹果正处于过渡阶段，这是他们在2015年左右推出的战略的一部分，旨在更多地关注iPhone用户群的增长，而不是销售。我预测，这一策略很快就会得到回报，并且在2021财年就得到了回报。那似乎是很久以前的事了。</blockquote> A consequence of buying the dip from 2005 to 2019 is that I own way too many Apple shares that I could never bring myself to sell. I am massively overweight Apple. There is a “What To Do With The Apple Shares” clause in my will. It is our largest asset, worth more than the house. That has not made me nervous until the last few months, when the tide seemed to start turning on Apple on this issue. I also used to be someone who did not take this threat seriously. I am going to start shaving my position as opportunities present themselves, and one may happen this week with the iPhone launch on Tuesday.<blockquote>从2005年到2019年逢低买入的一个后果是，我拥有太多苹果股票，我永远无法出售。我完全是跑赢大盘·苹果。我的遗嘱里有一个“如何处理苹果股票”的条款。这是我们最大的资产，比房子还值钱。这并没有让我感到紧张，直到最近几个月，在这个问题上，潮流似乎开始转向苹果。我也曾经是一个不把这种威胁当回事的人。随着机会的出现，我将开始削减我的职位，其中一个可能会在本周周二iPhone的发布中发生。</blockquote> To be clear, I will remain overweight Apple, just less so, and I remain bullish in the long term. But I no longer feel the safety I once did with this wildly overweight position.<blockquote>需要明确的是，我仍将是跑赢大盘·苹果，只是程度有所降低，而且从长远来看，我仍然看好。但是我不再感觉到曾经在这个疯狂的跑赢大盘位置上的安全感。</blockquote> In contrast, if you are a long term investor who does not have a massively overweight position, watch, wait and fight confirmation bias every day. If you think this begins and ends with Epic, you haven’t been paying attention.<blockquote>相比之下，如果您是一位没有大量跑赢大盘头寸的长期投资者，请每天观察、等待并对抗确认偏差。如果你认为这是以史诗开始和结束的，那你就没有注意。</blockquote> Please take this seriously.<blockquote>请认真对待这件事。</blockquote> I will be back in a few days with hopefully happier news from the iPhone launch on Tuesday. The big question is whether Apple can begin shipping iPhone before the quarter is out.<blockquote>几天后我会带着周二iPhone发布会的好消息回来。最大的问题是苹果能否在本季度结束前开始发货iPhone。</blockquote>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple App Store: The Tide Is Turning<blockquote>苹果应用商店：潮流正在转向</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple App Store: The Tide Is Turning<blockquote>苹果应用商店：潮流正在转向</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\nseekingalpha2021-09-13 23:32\n\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\nSummary<blockquote>总结</blockquote> <ul> <li>A US Federal District Court judge has ruled mostly in Apple’s favor in their case with Epic Games.</li> <li>Despite that, and in conjunction with a recent settlement with Japanese regulators, Apple will be getting rid of their anti-steering rule. This is a bigger change than people think.</li> <li>The threat to Apple doesn't end with the Epic trial. There are bigger threats coming from the executive and legislative branches in the US, and regulators in Europe and Asia.</li> </ul> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/323e8503a813d4996ee819f5591992b8\" tg-width=\"1536\" tg-height=\"1024\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News<blockquote><ul><li>美国联邦地区法院法官在Epic Games的案件中做出了对苹果有利的裁决。</li><li>尽管如此，加上最近与日本监管机构达成的和解，苹果将取消他们的反转向规则。这是一个比人们想象的更大的变化。</li><li>对苹果的威胁并没有随着史诗般的审判而结束。更大的威胁来自美国的行政和立法部门，以及欧洲和亚洲的监管机构。</li></ul>奇普·索莫德维拉/盖蒂图片社新闻</blockquote> It Does Not End Here<blockquote>它并没有就此结束</blockquote> For&nbsp;some time now, I&nbsp;have been warning&nbsp;that&nbsp;antitrust law was about to change, and these changes would not be favorable to Apple(NASDAQ:AAPL), and that investors need to take these threats seriously. In every one of these attempts, I was rebuffed in the comments by many Apple shareholders telling me that these fears and warnings were overblown. “Long and strong AAPL!” cheerleading seems to be popular.Confirmation bias&nbsp;is a strong thing, and you should fight it every single day.<blockquote>一段时间以来，我一直警告反垄断法即将发生变化，这些变化对苹果（纳斯达克股票代码：AAPL）不利，投资者需要认真对待这些威胁。在每一次尝试中，我都遭到了许多苹果股东的拒绝，他们告诉我这些担忧和警告被夸大了。“长而强的AAPL！”啦啦队似乎很受欢迎。确认偏见是一种强烈的东西，你应该每天都与之斗争。</blockquote> My last attempt was&nbsp;less than two weeks ago, and I was similarly dismissed, and even accused of being a short-selling tout to boot. That last suggestion is pretty funny to anyone who has had to listen to me drone on about Apple stock the last 16 years. The consequence of those 16 years is that I have a lot of Apple stock, so I take things like this very seriously.<blockquote>我最后一次尝试是在不到两周前，我同样被驳回，甚至被指责为卖空者。对于那些在过去16年里不得不听我喋喋不休地谈论苹果股票的人来说，最后一个建议非常有趣。那16年的后果是我有很多苹果的股票，所以我非常认真地对待这样的事情。</blockquote> Friday’s decision in Epic v. Apple had one part very bad news for Apple, but mostly a rejection of Epic’s main claim — that iOS is a market unto itself. But the bigger threat continues to be from Congress, where they can change the law in a single session. The House has already passed several bipartisan bills through committee, and three of them seem to have pretty wide support with the rest of the House. A narrower, but just as damaging companion bill is about to start working its way through the Senate. Keep your eyes on Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mike Lee of Utah.<blockquote>周五Epic诉苹果案的判决对苹果来说有一部分是非常坏的消息，但主要是拒绝了Epic的主要主张——iOS本身就是一个市场。但更大的威胁仍然来自国会，他们可以在一次会议中改变法律。众议院已经通过了几项两党法案，其中三项似乎得到了众议院其他成员的广泛支持。一项范围更窄但同样具有破坏性的配套法案即将开始在参议院通过。请关注明尼苏达州的艾米·克洛布查尔和犹他州的李政颖。</blockquote> Then we have regulatory action in the EU, Apple’s second most important region, where antitrust enforcers are siding with Spotify(NYSE:SPOT)in their dispute over in-app payments. Apple has already settled with Japan over their anti-steering rules. South Korea is forcing Apple and Google(NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG)to allow third-party in-app payments. China is a black hole of regulatory mystery.<blockquote>然后，我们在苹果第二重要地区欧盟采取了监管行动，那里的反垄断执法人员在应用内支付纠纷中站在Spotify（纽约证券交易所股票代码：SPOT）一边。苹果已经就日本的反转向规则与日本达成和解。南韩正在迫使苹果和谷歌（纳斯达克：GOOGL）（纳斯达克：GOOG）允许第三方应用内支付。中国是一个监管神秘的黑洞。</blockquote> The tide is turning on Apple on this issue. If you think this begins and ends with the Epic case, you haven’t been paying attention.<blockquote>在这个问题上，潮流正在转向苹果。如果你认为这是以史诗般的案件开始和结束的，那你就没有注意到。</blockquote> Right now the threat is confined to App Store, but this is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. This new antitrust movement may come for other parts of Apple, like the other pillar of their fast-growing Services segment, AppleCare, and even dig deeper into the way Apple likes to do business.<blockquote>目前威胁仅局限于App Store，但是这是开始的结束，而非结束的开始。这场新的反垄断运动可能会降临到苹果的其他部门，比如他们快速增长的服务部门的另一个支柱AppleCare，甚至更深入地挖掘苹果喜欢的做生意方式。</blockquote> What The Ruling Says<blockquote>裁决内容</blockquote> Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers hewed very closely to existing law, because that’s what usually happens in District Court, the lowest level of the federal system. She mostly had bad news for Epic, and targeted bad news for Apple.<blockquote>伊冯娜·冈萨雷斯·罗杰斯法官非常严格地遵守现有法律，因为这通常是联邦系统最低级别的地区法院发生的事情。她主要是给Epic带来坏消息，并针对苹果带来坏消息。</blockquote> The case rested on how the court defined the “relevant market” in question. Epic wanted it to be iOS, a market unto itself because of the high walls Apple builds around the ecosystem. Judge Rogers rejected that novel claim pretty handily. But she also rejected Apple’s definition: all gaming transactions, including PCs and consoles. She settled on mobile gaming transactions, so essentially the iOS-Android duopoly of mobile gaming transactions.<blockquote>该案取决于法院如何定义所讨论的“相关市场”。Epic希望它成为iOS，一个独立的市场，因为苹果在生态系统周围筑起了高墙。罗杰斯法官轻而易举地驳回了这一新颖的主张。但她也拒绝了苹果的定义：所有游戏交易，包括PC和主机。她选择了移动游戏交易，所以本质上是移动游戏交易的iOS和Android双头垄断。</blockquote> Here is the meat of the decision that follows from that:<blockquote>以下是由此得出的决定的实质：</blockquote> Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws. While the Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct. Success is not illegal… Nonetheless, the trial did show that Apple is engaging in anticompetitive conduct under California’s competition laws. The Court concludes that Apple’s anti-steering provisions hide critical information from consumers and illegally stifle consumer choice. When coupled with Apple’s incipient antitrust violations, these anti-steering provisions are anticompetitive and a nationwide remedy to eliminate those provisions is warranted. The most important thing to note here is that the problem for Apple is California law, not federal law. Federal law changing is where the real threat remains, and we are already well into that process.<blockquote>鉴于审判记录，法院无法最终得出结论，根据联邦或州反垄断法，苹果是垄断者。虽然法院发现苹果享有超过55%的可观市场份额和极高的利润率，但仅凭这些因素并不表明存在反垄断行为。成功并不违法……尽管如此，审判确实表明苹果参与了加州竞争法下的反竞争行为。法院的结论是，苹果的反转向条款向消费者隐瞒了关键信息，非法扼杀了消费者的选择。再加上苹果初期的反垄断违规行为，这些反转向条款是反竞争的，有必要在全国范围内采取补救措施来消除这些条款。这里最需要注意的是，苹果的问题是加州法律，而不是联邦法律。联邦法律的改变是真正的威胁所在，我们已经进入了这个过程。</blockquote> Judge Rogers ruled that Apple has to get rid of their anti-steering rules. App developers will now be allowed to inform users of less expensive options on their website, with a link. We’ll talk about the implications in a moment. Apple charges developers 30% for in-app payments, and the first year of in-app subscriptions (15% thereafter). In-app payments and subscriptions are substantially where all of App Store revenue comes from, about 28% of the Services segment and 5.4% of all revenue in calendar 2020.<blockquote>Rogers法官裁定苹果必须取消他们的反转向规则。应用开发者现在将被允许在他们的网站上通过链接通知用户更便宜的选项。我们一会儿会谈到其中的含义。苹果向开发者收取30%的应用内支付费用，以及第一年的应用内订阅费用（此后收取15%）。应用内支付和订阅基本上是App Store所有收入的来源，约占服务部门的28%，占2020年所有收入的5.4%。</blockquote> Also, in the category of rounding errors, Epic has to pay Apple the $3.6 million they owe them when they breached their contract. That’s about 0.001% of Apple’s 2021 top line.<blockquote>此外，在舍入错误类别中，Epic必须向苹果支付他们违反合同时欠他们的360万美元。这约占苹果2021年营收的0.001%。</blockquote> Epic’s Game<blockquote>史诗的游戏</blockquote> If you read&nbsp;my first article&nbsp;about the trial from when the pre-trial filings dropped, you may notice that I was a bit confused about what precisely Epic’s game was here. The foundation of their entire argument — that iOS was a market unto itself — was novel, to say the least. At least one of their lawyers must have informed them of the low likelihood of success on their main claims. Moreover, they burned a lot of pages on arguments not central to their case, but seem more geared towards tarnishing Apple’s reputation.<blockquote>如果你读了我的第一篇关于预审文件撤销时的审判文章，你可能会注意到我对Epic的游戏到底是什么有点困惑。至少可以说，他们整个论点的基础——iOS本身就是一个市场——是新颖的。至少有一名律师必须告知他们主要索赔成功的可能性很低。此外，他们烧毁了很多页的论点，这些论点与他们的案件无关，但似乎更倾向于玷污苹果的声誉。</blockquote> My current understanding is that this case was a publicity stunt. What’s more, it worked. The point was to get this issue into the public conversation. Here I am writing about it, and here you are reading about it. But more importantly, the tide is turning in Washington, and I think the issues raised by this trial have accelerated that.<blockquote>我目前的理解是，这个案子是一个宣传噱头。更重要的是，它起作用了。重点是让这个问题进入公众对话。我在这里写它，你在这里读到它。但更重要的是，华盛顿的潮流正在发生转变，我认为这次审判提出的问题加速了这一点。</blockquote> The Anti-Steering Rule<blockquote>反转向规则</blockquote> Like many of the App Store rules, the anti-steering rule was part of a multi-year whack-a-mole process where developers tried to find ways to cut out Apple, and Apple closed those holes. Apple fought very hard to keep this rule, but now seems to be capitulating. They settled with Japanese regulators recently on the anti-steering rules as it applied to media subscription apps, and applied the settlement to the rest of the world as well, maybe in anticipation of this ruling. With the Epic ruling, the anti-steering rule is gone.<blockquote>与许多App Store规则一样，反转向规则是多年打地鼠过程的一部分，开发者试图找到切断苹果的方法，苹果填补了这些漏洞。苹果非常努力地维护这一规则，但现在似乎投降了。他们最近与日本监管机构就适用于媒体订阅应用程序的反转向规则达成了和解，并将和解协议也适用于世界其他地区，也许是对这一裁决的预期。随着史诗般的裁决，反转向规则消失了。</blockquote> When a game developer like Epic sells their virtual currency on the App Store, they have a 30% payment fee. When they make the same transaction on their website, it is probably under 3%. This was always what this was about. Epic wanted to have their own in-app payment system to supersede Apple’s, without the friction of sending people to the website. Judge Rogers rejected that, but gave Epic a partial victory by banning Apple’s anti-steering rules.<blockquote>当像Epic这样的游戏开发商在App Store上出售他们的虚拟货币时，他们有30%的支付费用。当他们在自己的网站上进行同样的交易时，大概在3%以下。这一直都是为了这个。Epic希望拥有自己的应用内支付系统来取代苹果的支付系统，而不会出现将人们送到网站的摩擦。Rogers法官驳回了这一要求，但通过禁止苹果的反转向规则，Epic获得了部分胜利。</blockquote> The anti-steering rules prevented app developers from having text and links to their own much less expensive in-app payments or subscriptions on their websites. This is a real loss for Apple, and puts the whole structure of the two most lucrative payment methods in the App Store at risk.<blockquote>反转向规则阻止应用程序开发者在其网站上发布文本和链接到他们自己便宜得多的应用内支付或订阅。这对苹果来说是一个真正的损失，并将App Store中最赚钱的两种支付方式的整个结构置于危险之中。</blockquote> Let’s say a gaming company pays a 2.5% processing fee on their website. That means they have 27.5 percentage points of marketing to play with. They could give that entire 27.5% to users in the form of a rebate or freebies. It certainly increases friction to have to leave a game you're having fun with, but if there is a big, friendly, dark-patterned button that says “Want free money?” I think a lot of people would tap that button. What’s more, they get to book the same amount in revenue, and stick the cost down in sales and marketing.<blockquote>假设一家游戏公司在其网站上支付2.5%的处理费。这意味着他们有27.5个百分点的营销空间可以利用。他们可以以折扣或免费赠品的形式给用户全部27.5%。不得不离开一个你正在享受的游戏肯定会增加摩擦，但是如果有一个大的、友好的、深色图案的按钮写着“想要免费的钱吗？”我想很多人会点击那个按钮。更重要的是，他们可以记录相同金额的收入，并在销售和营销方面降低成本。</blockquote> That’s just one example of how companies may decide to go with this. That’s a lot of margin to play with. The reason Apple had this rule in the first place is that they feared someone would find the magic formula that would provide more revenue by eschewing in-app payments altogether, and everyone else would copy them. They had fought very hard to keep this rule for a reason.<blockquote>这只是公司可能决定采取这种做法的一个例子。这是一个很大的空间。苹果最初制定这条规则的原因是，他们担心有人会找到一个神奇的公式，通过完全避免应用内支付来提供更多收入，而其他人都会效仿他们。他们努力维护这条规则是有原因的。</blockquote> Just after the news broke, a friend who knows&nbsp;I own both stocks&nbsp;trolled me with this Bloomberg Terminal screenshot:<blockquote>消息传出后，一位知道我拥有这两只股票的朋友用这张彭博终端截图向我进行了攻击：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/78570d7ae73401a933b2359f3dcd47da\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"281\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><blockquote></blockquote> Roblox(NYSE:RBLX)is a pure-play mobile gaming company. The vast majority of their revenues come from in-app payments from iOS and Android, the rest from their website sales. Their cost-of-revenues almost all goes to Apple and Google. In the TTM, they had a 74.4% gross margin. If they pay a 2.5% processing fee for website sales, that means 84% of their transaction value was through iOS and Android. If they could get that to 50-50, that would raise all their margins down to EBT by 10 percentage points. If they could get to 73% of sales on the website, they would have a 90% gross margin.<blockquote>Roblox（纽约证券交易所股票代码：RBLX）是一家纯粹的移动游戏公司。他们的绝大多数收入来自iOS和Android的应用内支付，其余来自网站销售。他们的收入成本几乎全部归苹果和谷歌所有。在TTM，他们的毛利率为74.4%。如果他们为网站销售支付2.5%的处理费，这意味着他们84%的交易价值是通过iOS和Android进行的。如果他们能够将这一比例提高到50-50，那么他们在EBT的所有利润率将提高10个百分点。如果他们能在网站上获得73%的销售额，他们将有90%的毛利率。</blockquote> There is a lot of money at stake, and a huge incentive for gaming and subscription media companies to figure out how to thread this needle. And that’s all in the absence of further action by the other two branches of government.<blockquote>这关系到大量的资金，游戏和订阅媒体公司也有巨大的动力去想办法解决这个问题。这一切都是在其他两个政府部门没有采取进一步行动的情况下发生的。</blockquote> The Executive Branch<blockquote>行政部门</blockquote> This is a good place to discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the new antitrust movement, because two of its leaders now work in the Biden administration. The movement is sometimes referred to as the “neo-Brandeis” movement after Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, because it harkens back to a much earlier era of antitrust enforcement that drastically changed in the 1980s.<blockquote>这是讨论新反垄断运动理论基础的好地方，因为其两位领导人现在在拜登政府工作。这场运动有时被称为“新布兰代斯”运动，以最高法院大法官路易斯·布兰代斯的名字命名，因为它可以追溯到更早的反垄断执法时代，该时代在20世纪80年代发生了巨大变化。</blockquote> In 1978, Robert Bork (yes,that Robert Bork) wrote a very influential book called&nbsp;The Antitrust Paradox. His theory urged a refocusing of enforcement away from competition, and towards consumer benefit as the main test. He argued that antitrust enforcement was propping up smaller, less efficient companies to the detriment of the economy.<blockquote>1978年，罗伯特·博克（没错，就是那个罗伯特·博克）写了一本非常有影响力的书，叫做反垄断悖论他的理论敦促将执法重点从竞争转向消费者利益作为主要检验标准。他认为，反垄断执法正在支撑规模较小、效率较低的公司，损害了经济。</blockquote> The 1982 AT&amp;T breakup consent decree became the prototype for the new enforcement. By controlling local and long distance telecommunication, as well as the equipment, AT&amp;T had been underinvesting and overcharging for decades. Their breakup brought an explosion of investment into telecommunications, and brought down prices quickly for landline service and equipment. That became the limit of antitrust enforcement.<blockquote>1982年美国电话电报公司分手同意法令成为新执法的原型。通过控制本地和长途电信以及设备，美国电话电报公司几十年来一直投资不足，收费过高。他们的分手带来了电信投资的爆炸式增长，并迅速降低了固定电话服务和设备的价格。这成为反垄断执法的极限。</blockquote> But the focus on consumer benefit has affected competition, and that’s what the neo-Brandeis movement hopes to change. They want antitrust enforcement to return to the way it was a century ago, with more of a focus on how large companies affect competition. Lina Khan, a law professor at Columbia, now runs the FTC, the primary antitrust enforcer in the federal government. Her 2017 law review article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” was the spark that lit this fire. Her colleague at Columbia Law, Tim Wu, is also one of the leaders of this movement. He is a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, and his fingerprints are all over&nbsp;the July competition executive order.<blockquote>但是对消费者利益的关注影响了竞争，这就是新布兰代斯运动希望改变的。他们希望反垄断执法回到一个世纪前的样子，更多地关注大公司如何影响竞争。哥伦比亚大学法学教授莉娜·汗(Lina Khan)现在负责联邦政府主要的反垄断执法机构联邦贸易委员会(FTC)。她2017年的法律评论文章《亚马逊的反垄断悖论》是点燃这场大火的火花。她在哥伦比亚法学院的同事蒂姆·吴也是这场运动的领导者之一。他是白宫经济顾问委员会的成员，7月份的竞争行政命令上到处都是他的指纹。</blockquote> The order was very wide ranging, with 72 initiatives covering 14 departments and agencies. Most of it does not relate to Apple, but it gives you an idea of the wide breadth of the order. As it relates to Apple:<blockquote>该命令范围非常广泛，有72项举措，涵盖14个部门和机构。它的大部分与苹果无关，但它让你对秩序的广度有所了解。就苹果而言：</blockquote> <ul> <li>Right-to-repair is a huge threat to the other pillar of Services, AppleCare, which I estimate at 25%-30% of the segment. But more than that, it would change the way Apple makes devices. Apple squeezes out efficiency gains by attaching pooled memory directly to the main processor die, and by soldering storage into the motherboard. Both of these would likely be prohibited to them, and the devices would suffer.</li> <li>The FTC is two months into a yearlong frisk of the mobile app ecosystem. Based on previous writings, Lina Khan will likely recommend third party app stores, “sideloading” directly from the web, and an end to the in-app payments monopoly.</li> </ul> Executive branch action is always subject to court challenges, and they can take very long to implement. But Congress can change the law in a single session. And they are already into that process.<blockquote><ul><li>维修权对服务的另一个支柱AppleCare来说是一个巨大的威胁，我估计AppleCare占该细分市场的25%-30%。但更重要的是，它将改变苹果制造设备的方式。苹果通过将池内存直接连接到主处理器芯片，以及将存储焊接到主板来挤出效率增益。这两个都可能被禁止，设备也会受到影响。</li><li>联邦贸易委员会对移动应用生态系统长达一年的搜查已经进行了两个月。根据之前的著作，Lina Khan可能会推荐第三方应用商店，直接从网络“侧装”，并结束应用内支付垄断。</li></ul>行政部门的行动总是受到法院的质疑，而且可能需要很长时间才能实施。但是国会可以在一届会议上改变法律。他们已经进入了这个过程。</blockquote> The Legislative Branch<blockquote>立法部门</blockquote> Since there are two houses of Congress, this issue is off on two tracks. The House Judiciary Committee recently passed a suite of bipartisan bills. Of the ones that I think have a good likelihood of passing the full House, here’s how it affects Apple:<blockquote>由于国会有两院，这个问题在两条轨道上。众议院司法委员会最近通过了一系列两党法案。在我认为很有可能获得全院通过的法案中，以下是它对苹果的影响：</blockquote> They would be required to allow third party app stores, sideloading, and third party payments in the Apple App Store.<blockquote>他们将被要求允许苹果应用商店中的第三方应用商店、侧装和第三方支付。</blockquote> Restricting Apple’s ability to acquire smaller companies. In the past 6 years, Apple has bought around 100 companies, which works out to about one every three weeks on average. It looks like they had been accelerating since fiscal 2018, but then abruptly stopped in fiscal 2021. The reason is the new leader of the FTC.<blockquote>限制苹果收购小公司的能力。在过去的6年里，苹果收购了大约100家公司，平均每三周就收购一家。看起来他们自2018财年以来一直在加速，但在2021财年突然停止。原因是FTC的新领导人。</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a2fc9a2578663cc746fdb19ca19dea4c\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"417\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Data by YCharts<blockquote>数据来自YCharts</blockquote> The big bulge you see there in 2014 is the Beats acquisition at $3 billion, which remains the exception. Otherwise, Apple buys very small companies for tens or hundreds of millions, usually shuts down any products they may have, and absorbs the talent and IP into Apple proper. Apple’s chip design unit, a cornerstone of their current success, began this way in 2008.<blockquote>你在2014年看到的最大增长是以30亿美元收购Beats，这仍然是个例外。否则，苹果会花数千万或数亿美元收购非常小的公司，通常会关闭他们可能拥有的任何产品，并将人才和知识产权吸收到苹果本土。苹果的芯片设计部门是他们目前成功的基石，2008年就是这样开始的。</blockquote> No more private APIs.This would mean everything, like the Apple Pay-enabling NFC chip, would be open to competitors.<blockquote>不再有私有API。这意味着一切，比如支持苹果支付的NFC芯片，都将向竞争对手开放。</blockquote> No more discriminatory rules.Apple doesn’t force real-world product and service providers like Uber(NYSE:UBER)to use in-app payments. Apple would either have to try and get Uber to pay them 30%, or drop the requirement altogether.<blockquote>不再有歧视性的规则。苹果不会强迫Uber（纽约证券交易所股票代码：UBER）等现实世界的产品和服务提供商使用应用内支付。苹果要么试图让优步向他们支付30%的费用，要么完全放弃这一要求。</blockquote> The end of the Google search deal.Google currently pays Apple a purported $12 billion a year to make Google the default search engine on iOS. This cash goes directly to EBT.<blockquote>谷歌搜索交易的结束。谷歌目前据称每年向苹果支付120亿美元，以使谷歌成为iOS上的默认搜索引擎。这笔现金直接流向EBT。</blockquote> They would have to expose more user data to developers.<blockquote>他们将不得不向开发者公开更多的用户数据。</blockquote> Formalizing the anti-steering decision.<blockquote>正式确定反转向决策。</blockquote> Anti-retaliation provision.If these bills were law, Epic would still be on the App Store while they sued Apple.<blockquote>反报复条款。如果这些法案成为法律，当他们起诉苹果时，Epic仍将在App Store上。</blockquote> After the House is done wrangling over budget reconciliation, I think these bills will hit the House floor this fall or winter, and I think that they have a high likelihood of passing in something like their current form.<blockquote>在众议院结束关于预算协调的争论后，我认为这些法案将在今年秋天或冬天提交众议院，我认为它们很有可能以目前的形式获得通过。</blockquote> But bills also have to clear the Senate, and they move slower. Things are just getting started there. The big movers in the Senate are Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mike Lee of Utah. Klobuchar has&nbsp;written a long book&nbsp;on the subject, and it is not friendly towards Apple. She has also authored a new bill, Open App Markets Act. It is more narrow than the House suite, but not by much. It would still force Apple to allow third party app stores, sideloading, and third party in-app payments. They would also have to get rid of their private APIs. The bill is narrower than the House suite, and less of a threat to Apple, but still would mean the end of App Store as a driver of growth.The Senate bill is the better outcome for Apple, and it is still terrible.<blockquote>但法案也必须通过参议院，而且进展较慢。那里的事情才刚刚开始。参议院的大推动者是明尼苏达州的艾米·克洛布查尔和犹他州的李政颖。Klobuchar就这个问题写了一本长书，它对苹果并不友好。她还起草了一项新法案《开放应用市场法案》。它比房子套房窄，但也窄不了多少。它仍将迫使苹果允许第三方应用商店、侧装和第三方应用内支付。他们还必须摆脱他们的私有API。该法案比众议院套房更窄，对苹果的威胁也更小，但仍意味着App Store作为增长驱动力的终结。参议院的法案对苹果来说是更好的结果，但仍然很糟糕。</blockquote> I believe that we will see something pass before the next Presidential election, or even in this Congressional session. The best Apple shareholders can hope for is that the final bill gets watered down considerably.<blockquote>我相信，在下届总统选举之前，甚至在本届国会会议上，我们会看到一些事情通过。苹果股东最大的希望就是最终法案被大幅淡化。</blockquote> Outside The US<blockquote>美国境外</blockquote> This is in no way limited to the US. We already discussed the Japanese settlement, and South Korea is forcing Apple and Google to allow third party in-app payments. The case that is farthest along in the EU is Spotify’s, which would force Apple to not charge fees to competing services, so that means music, podcasts, games, video and fitness.<blockquote>这绝不仅限于美国。我们已经讨论了日本的和解，南韩正在迫使苹果和谷歌允许第三方应用内支付。欧盟进展最快的案例是Spotify，这将迫使苹果不向竞争服务收费，因此这意味着音乐、播客、游戏、视频和健身。</blockquote> The Chinese Communist Party remains the&nbsp;second biggest tail risk in the world&nbsp;after climate change. Apple’s regulatory risk there is uniquely high, both on the supply and demand sides. Apple has already given into them by not providing their Chinese customers with the same level of privacy as everyone else. With the mood in China right now, who knows where that goes.<blockquote>中国共产党仍然是仅次于气候变化的世界第二大尾部风险。无论是在供应还是需求方面，苹果的监管风险都非常高。苹果已经屈服于他们，没有向他们的中国客户提供和其他人一样的隐私水平。以中国现在的情绪，谁知道会走向何方。</blockquote> What Losing Control Of App Store Looks Like<blockquote>失去对App Store的控制是什么样子</blockquote> Stone Fox Capital here at Seeking Alpha is&nbsp;out with an article&nbsp;pivoting off Katy Huberty's estimation of a 2% earnings loss if the top 20 apps on the App Store were able to eschew in-app payments. Stone Fox would also like you to care about that seemingly small number:<blockquote>Seeking Alpha的Stone Fox Capital发表了一篇文章，反驳了Katy Huberty的估计，如果App Store上排名前20的应用程序能够避免应用内支付，收益将损失2%。石狐也希望大家关心一下这个看似很小的数字：</blockquote> Apple won most of their legal case with Epic Games based on the ruling announced on September 10, but the tech giant lost the ultimate battle. The stock remains priced for perfection while the company continues to have growth paths chipped away from the business. My last article on this subject was called “Chipping Away at App Store.” This is what is happening and the trend is now clear. There is a mood globally to take Apple down a peg, and it is happening too slowly for many people to realize it is happening.<blockquote>根据9月10日宣布的裁决，苹果赢得了与Epic Games的大部分法律诉讼，但这家科技巨头输掉了最终的战斗。该股的定价仍然是完美的，而该公司的增长道路继续从业务中被削弱。我上一篇关于这个主题的文章叫做“在App Store上削足适履”。这就是正在发生的事情，趋势现在很明显。全球都有一种降低苹果汇率的情绪，但这种情绪发生得太慢，许多人都没有意识到它正在发生。</blockquote> My own way of modeling the worst case is through my DCF model. It’s modeled as a 25% hit to Services in the first year, with services gross margin reduced from 68% to 65%, followed by a slightly increased growth rate in the segment because of composition effects — the rest of Services grows faster than App Store. I used to model that happening in fiscal 2024, but I have moved that up to fiscal 2023, beginning less than 13 months from now.<blockquote>我自己对最坏情况建模的方法是通过我的DCF模型。它的模型是第一年服务受到25%的打击，服务毛利率从68%下降到65%，随后由于构成效应，该细分市场的增长率略有上升——其余服务的增长速度快于App Store。我曾经对2024财年发生的情况进行建模，但我已将其提前到2023财年，从现在开始不到13个月。</blockquote> Here is the effect on fair value on my base case:<blockquote>以下是我的基本案例对公允价值的影响：</blockquote> <img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/94b635fe7a2473aafe36bd095a1206b6\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"352\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><blockquote></blockquote> Even with the very slow start for the reason Stone Fox says — the share price has gotten way out ahead of cash flows — my base case still shows an 11% CAGR in fair value through the end of fiscal 2025. The App Store collapse takes that down to an 8% CAGR, 12% lower by 2025.<blockquote>尽管由于Stone Fox所说的原因，起步非常缓慢——股价已经远远领先于现金流——但我的基本假设仍然显示，到2025财年末，公允价值复合年增长率为11%。App Store的倒闭使复合年增长率降至8%，到2025年将下降12%。</blockquote> Circling back, Stone Fox puts a button on this more succinctly than I can:<blockquote>回头，石狐比我更简洁地按下了一个按钮：</blockquote> The key investor takeaway is that Apple has a bright future. The company will continue generating profits with operating cash flows topping $100 billion annually, but the tech giant will struggle to generate the growth needed to warrant the current stock price. The 2% hit to earnings might not seem meaningful, but the amount is very harmful to a stock priced for perfection. How To Take This Seriously<blockquote>投资者的主要收获是苹果拥有光明的未来。该公司将继续创造利润，每年运营现金流超过1000亿美元，但这家科技巨头将难以实现维持当前股价所需的增长。盈利2%的打击似乎没有意义，但这个数额对于定价完美的股票来说是非常有害的。如何认真对待这个</blockquote> In my last article on this subject, someone cheekily replied in the comments, “‘Please take this seriously.’ What does that even mean?” That’s a good question. The first part of the answer is to stop pretending it’s not happening.<blockquote>在我关于这个主题的上一篇文章中，有人在评论中厚颜无耻地回答说：“‘请认真对待这件事。’这到底是什么意思？”这是个好问题。答案的第一部分是不要假装它没有发生。</blockquote> “If your time horizon is short, now is a good time to take profits.” I have been using that phrase frequently since Apple hit $140. The last chart just formalizes it with math, but my opinion is that Apple will remain range-bound for some time, between $125 and $155, roughly. I still mean it: if your time horizon is short, now is a good time to take profits.<blockquote>“如果你的时间范围很短，现在是获利了结的好时机。”自从苹果股价达到140美元以来，我就经常使用这个短语。最后一张图表只是用数学将其形式化，但我的观点是苹果将在一段时间内保持区间波动，大约在125美元到155美元之间。我还是这个意思：如果你的时间范围很短，现在是获利了结的好时机。</blockquote> But I also believe that no other company is as prepared for the future of technology, regardless of what that brings. That is a&nbsp;far longer discussion. I have been buying Apple shares on the dip since 2005, which is two splits ago. My last buy was in January 2019, when Apple reported that they would miss guidance for the first time in many years. At the time, the commentariat was telling me that Apple’s best days were behind them. I tried to explain that Apple was in a transitional phase, part of a strategy they launched around 2015 to focus more on the growth of the iPhone user base than sales. The strategy would pay off soon, I predicted, and it did in fiscal 2021. That seems like a very long time ago now.<blockquote>但我也相信，没有其他公司为技术的未来做好了准备，无论它会带来什么。这是一个长得多的讨论。自2005年以来，我一直在逢低买入苹果股票，这是两次拆分前。我最后一次购买是在2019年1月，当时苹果报告称他们将多年来首次错过指导。当时，评论员告诉我，苹果最好的日子已经过去了。我试图解释说，苹果正处于过渡阶段，这是他们在2015年左右推出的战略的一部分，旨在更多地关注iPhone用户群的增长，而不是销售。我预测，这一策略很快就会得到回报，并且在2021财年就得到了回报。那似乎是很久以前的事了。</blockquote> A consequence of buying the dip from 2005 to 2019 is that I own way too many Apple shares that I could never bring myself to sell. I am massively overweight Apple. There is a “What To Do With The Apple Shares” clause in my will. It is our largest asset, worth more than the house. That has not made me nervous until the last few months, when the tide seemed to start turning on Apple on this issue. I also used to be someone who did not take this threat seriously. I am going to start shaving my position as opportunities present themselves, and one may happen this week with the iPhone launch on Tuesday.<blockquote>从2005年到2019年逢低买入的一个后果是，我拥有太多苹果股票，我永远无法出售。我完全是跑赢大盘·苹果。我的遗嘱里有一个“如何处理苹果股票”的条款。这是我们最大的资产，比房子还值钱。这并没有让我感到紧张，直到最近几个月，在这个问题上，潮流似乎开始转向苹果。我也曾经是一个不把这种威胁当回事的人。随着机会的出现，我将开始削减我的职位，其中一个可能会在本周周二iPhone的发布中发生。</blockquote> To be clear, I will remain overweight Apple, just less so, and I remain bullish in the long term. But I no longer feel the safety I once did with this wildly overweight position.<blockquote>需要明确的是，我仍将是跑赢大盘·苹果，只是程度有所降低，而且从长远来看，我仍然看好。但是我不再感觉到曾经在这个疯狂的跑赢大盘位置上的安全感。</blockquote> In contrast, if you are a long term investor who does not have a massively overweight position, watch, wait and fight confirmation bias every day. If you think this begins and ends with Epic, you haven’t been paying attention.<blockquote>相比之下，如果您是一位没有大量跑赢大盘头寸的长期投资者，请每天观察、等待并对抗确认偏差。如果你认为这是以史诗开始和结束的，那你就没有注意。</blockquote> Please take this seriously.<blockquote>请认真对待这件事。</blockquote> I will be back in a few days with hopefully happier news from the iPhone launch on Tuesday. The big question is whether Apple can begin shipping iPhone before the quarter is out.<blockquote>几天后我会带着周二iPhone发布会的好消息回来。最大的问题是苹果能否在本季度结束前开始发货iPhone。</blockquote>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n 来源：<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4454891-apple-app-store-the-tide-is-turning\">seekingalpha</a>\n为提升您的阅读体验，我们对本页面进行了排版优化\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4454891-apple-app-store-the-tide-is-turning","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1171919128","content_text":"Summary\n\nA US Federal District Court judge has ruled mostly in Apple’s favor in their case with Epic Games.\nDespite that, and in conjunction with a recent settlement with Japanese regulators, Apple will be getting rid of their anti-steering rule. This is a bigger change than people think.\nThe threat to Apple doesn't end with the Epic trial. There are bigger threats coming from the executive and legislative branches in the US, and regulators in Europe and Asia.\n\nChip Somodevilla/Getty Images News\nIt Does Not End Here\nFor some time now, I have been warning that antitrust law was about to change, and these changes would not be favorable to Apple(NASDAQ:AAPL), and that investors need to take these threats seriously. In every one of these attempts, I was rebuffed in the comments by many Apple shareholders telling me that these fears and warnings were overblown. “Long and strong AAPL!” cheerleading seems to be popular.Confirmation bias is a strong thing, and you should fight it every single day.\nMy last attempt was less than two weeks ago, and I was similarly dismissed, and even accused of being a short-selling tout to boot. That last suggestion is pretty funny to anyone who has had to listen to me drone on about Apple stock the last 16 years. The consequence of those 16 years is that I have a lot of Apple stock, so I take things like this very seriously.\nFriday’s decision in Epic v. Apple had one part very bad news for Apple, but mostly a rejection of Epic’s main claim — that iOS is a market unto itself. But the bigger threat continues to be from Congress, where they can change the law in a single session. The House has already passed several bipartisan bills through committee, and three of them seem to have pretty wide support with the rest of the House. A narrower, but just as damaging companion bill is about to start working its way through the Senate. Keep your eyes on Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mike Lee of Utah.\nThen we have regulatory action in the EU, Apple’s second most important region, where antitrust enforcers are siding with Spotify(NYSE:SPOT)in their dispute over in-app payments. Apple has already settled with Japan over their anti-steering rules. South Korea is forcing Apple and Google(NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG)to allow third-party in-app payments. China is a black hole of regulatory mystery.\nThe tide is turning on Apple on this issue. If you think this begins and ends with the Epic case, you haven’t been paying attention.\nRight now the threat is confined to App Store, but this is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. This new antitrust movement may come for other parts of Apple, like the other pillar of their fast-growing Services segment, AppleCare, and even dig deeper into the way Apple likes to do business.\nWhat The Ruling Says\nJudge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers hewed very closely to existing law, because that’s what usually happens in District Court, the lowest level of the federal system. She mostly had bad news for Epic, and targeted bad news for Apple.\nThe case rested on how the court defined the “relevant market” in question. Epic wanted it to be iOS, a market unto itself because of the high walls Apple builds around the ecosystem. Judge Rogers rejected that novel claim pretty handily. But she also rejected Apple’s definition: all gaming transactions, including PCs and consoles. She settled on mobile gaming transactions, so essentially the iOS-Android duopoly of mobile gaming transactions.\nHere is the meat of the decision that follows from that:\n\n Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws. While the Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct. Success is not illegal…\n\n\n Nonetheless, the trial did show that Apple is engaging in anticompetitive conduct under California’s competition laws. The Court concludes that Apple’s anti-steering provisions hide critical information from consumers and illegally stifle consumer choice. When coupled with Apple’s incipient antitrust violations, these anti-steering provisions are anticompetitive and a nationwide remedy to eliminate those provisions is warranted.\n\nThe most important thing to note here is that the problem for Apple is California law, not federal law. Federal law changing is where the real threat remains, and we are already well into that process.\nJudge Rogers ruled that Apple has to get rid of their anti-steering rules. App developers will now be allowed to inform users of less expensive options on their website, with a link. We’ll talk about the implications in a moment. Apple charges developers 30% for in-app payments, and the first year of in-app subscriptions (15% thereafter). In-app payments and subscriptions are substantially where all of App Store revenue comes from, about 28% of the Services segment and 5.4% of all revenue in calendar 2020.\nAlso, in the category of rounding errors, Epic has to pay Apple the $3.6 million they owe them when they breached their contract. That’s about 0.001% of Apple’s 2021 top line.\nEpic’s Game\nIf you read my first article about the trial from when the pre-trial filings dropped, you may notice that I was a bit confused about what precisely Epic’s game was here. The foundation of their entire argument — that iOS was a market unto itself — was novel, to say the least. At least one of their lawyers must have informed them of the low likelihood of success on their main claims. Moreover, they burned a lot of pages on arguments not central to their case, but seem more geared towards tarnishing Apple’s reputation.\nMy current understanding is that this case was a publicity stunt. What’s more, it worked. The point was to get this issue into the public conversation. Here I am writing about it, and here you are reading about it. But more importantly, the tide is turning in Washington, and I think the issues raised by this trial have accelerated that.\nThe Anti-Steering Rule\nLike many of the App Store rules, the anti-steering rule was part of a multi-year whack-a-mole process where developers tried to find ways to cut out Apple, and Apple closed those holes. Apple fought very hard to keep this rule, but now seems to be capitulating. They settled with Japanese regulators recently on the anti-steering rules as it applied to media subscription apps, and applied the settlement to the rest of the world as well, maybe in anticipation of this ruling. With the Epic ruling, the anti-steering rule is gone.\nWhen a game developer like Epic sells their virtual currency on the App Store, they have a 30% payment fee. When they make the same transaction on their website, it is probably under 3%. This was always what this was about. Epic wanted to have their own in-app payment system to supersede Apple’s, without the friction of sending people to the website. Judge Rogers rejected that, but gave Epic a partial victory by banning Apple’s anti-steering rules.\nThe anti-steering rules prevented app developers from having text and links to their own much less expensive in-app payments or subscriptions on their websites. This is a real loss for Apple, and puts the whole structure of the two most lucrative payment methods in the App Store at risk.\nLet’s say a gaming company pays a 2.5% processing fee on their website. That means they have 27.5 percentage points of marketing to play with. They could give that entire 27.5% to users in the form of a rebate or freebies. It certainly increases friction to have to leave a game you're having fun with, but if there is a big, friendly, dark-patterned button that says “Want free money?” I think a lot of people would tap that button. What’s more, they get to book the same amount in revenue, and stick the cost down in sales and marketing.\nThat’s just one example of how companies may decide to go with this. That’s a lot of margin to play with. The reason Apple had this rule in the first place is that they feared someone would find the magic formula that would provide more revenue by eschewing in-app payments altogether, and everyone else would copy them. They had fought very hard to keep this rule for a reason.\nJust after the news broke, a friend who knows I own both stocks trolled me with this Bloomberg Terminal screenshot:\n\nRoblox(NYSE:RBLX)is a pure-play mobile gaming company. The vast majority of their revenues come from in-app payments from iOS and Android, the rest from their website sales. Their cost-of-revenues almost all goes to Apple and Google. In the TTM, they had a 74.4% gross margin. If they pay a 2.5% processing fee for website sales, that means 84% of their transaction value was through iOS and Android. If they could get that to 50-50, that would raise all their margins down to EBT by 10 percentage points. If they could get to 73% of sales on the website, they would have a 90% gross margin.\nThere is a lot of money at stake, and a huge incentive for gaming and subscription media companies to figure out how to thread this needle. And that’s all in the absence of further action by the other two branches of government.\nThe Executive Branch\nThis is a good place to discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the new antitrust movement, because two of its leaders now work in the Biden administration. The movement is sometimes referred to as the “neo-Brandeis” movement after Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, because it harkens back to a much earlier era of antitrust enforcement that drastically changed in the 1980s.\nIn 1978, Robert Bork (yes,that Robert Bork) wrote a very influential book called The Antitrust Paradox. His theory urged a refocusing of enforcement away from competition, and towards consumer benefit as the main test. He argued that antitrust enforcement was propping up smaller, less efficient companies to the detriment of the economy.\nThe 1982 AT&T breakup consent decree became the prototype for the new enforcement. By controlling local and long distance telecommunication, as well as the equipment, AT&T had been underinvesting and overcharging for decades. Their breakup brought an explosion of investment into telecommunications, and brought down prices quickly for landline service and equipment. That became the limit of antitrust enforcement.\nBut the focus on consumer benefit has affected competition, and that’s what the neo-Brandeis movement hopes to change. They want antitrust enforcement to return to the way it was a century ago, with more of a focus on how large companies affect competition. Lina Khan, a law professor at Columbia, now runs the FTC, the primary antitrust enforcer in the federal government. Her 2017 law review article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” was the spark that lit this fire. Her colleague at Columbia Law, Tim Wu, is also one of the leaders of this movement. He is a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, and his fingerprints are all over the July competition executive order.\nThe order was very wide ranging, with 72 initiatives covering 14 departments and agencies. Most of it does not relate to Apple, but it gives you an idea of the wide breadth of the order. As it relates to Apple:\n\nRight-to-repair is a huge threat to the other pillar of Services, AppleCare, which I estimate at 25%-30% of the segment. But more than that, it would change the way Apple makes devices. Apple squeezes out efficiency gains by attaching pooled memory directly to the main processor die, and by soldering storage into the motherboard. Both of these would likely be prohibited to them, and the devices would suffer.\nThe FTC is two months into a yearlong frisk of the mobile app ecosystem. Based on previous writings, Lina Khan will likely recommend third party app stores, “sideloading” directly from the web, and an end to the in-app payments monopoly.\n\nExecutive branch action is always subject to court challenges, and they can take very long to implement. But Congress can change the law in a single session. And they are already into that process.\nThe Legislative Branch\nSince there are two houses of Congress, this issue is off on two tracks. The House Judiciary Committee recently passed a suite of bipartisan bills. Of the ones that I think have a good likelihood of passing the full House, here’s how it affects Apple:\nThey would be required to allow third party app stores, sideloading, and third party payments in the Apple App Store.\nRestricting Apple’s ability to acquire smaller companies. In the past 6 years, Apple has bought around 100 companies, which works out to about one every three weeks on average. It looks like they had been accelerating since fiscal 2018, but then abruptly stopped in fiscal 2021. The reason is the new leader of the FTC.\nData by YCharts\nThe big bulge you see there in 2014 is the Beats acquisition at $3 billion, which remains the exception. Otherwise, Apple buys very small companies for tens or hundreds of millions, usually shuts down any products they may have, and absorbs the talent and IP into Apple proper. Apple’s chip design unit, a cornerstone of their current success, began this way in 2008.\nNo more private APIs.This would mean everything, like the Apple Pay-enabling NFC chip, would be open to competitors.\nNo more discriminatory rules.Apple doesn’t force real-world product and service providers like Uber(NYSE:UBER)to use in-app payments. Apple would either have to try and get Uber to pay them 30%, or drop the requirement altogether.\nThe end of the Google search deal.Google currently pays Apple a purported $12 billion a year to make Google the default search engine on iOS. This cash goes directly to EBT.\nThey would have to expose more user data to developers.\nFormalizing the anti-steering decision.\nAnti-retaliation provision.If these bills were law, Epic would still be on the App Store while they sued Apple.\nAfter the House is done wrangling over budget reconciliation, I think these bills will hit the House floor this fall or winter, and I think that they have a high likelihood of passing in something like their current form.\nBut bills also have to clear the Senate, and they move slower. Things are just getting started there. The big movers in the Senate are Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mike Lee of Utah. Klobuchar has written a long book on the subject, and it is not friendly towards Apple. She has also authored a new bill, Open App Markets Act. It is more narrow than the House suite, but not by much. It would still force Apple to allow third party app stores, sideloading, and third party in-app payments. They would also have to get rid of their private APIs. The bill is narrower than the House suite, and less of a threat to Apple, but still would mean the end of App Store as a driver of growth.The Senate bill is the better outcome for Apple, and it is still terrible.\nI believe that we will see something pass before the next Presidential election, or even in this Congressional session. The best Apple shareholders can hope for is that the final bill gets watered down considerably.\nOutside The US\nThis is in no way limited to the US. We already discussed the Japanese settlement, and South Korea is forcing Apple and Google to allow third party in-app payments. The case that is farthest along in the EU is Spotify’s, which would force Apple to not charge fees to competing services, so that means music, podcasts, games, video and fitness.\nThe Chinese Communist Party remains the second biggest tail risk in the world after climate change. Apple’s regulatory risk there is uniquely high, both on the supply and demand sides. Apple has already given into them by not providing their Chinese customers with the same level of privacy as everyone else. With the mood in China right now, who knows where that goes.\nWhat Losing Control Of App Store Looks Like\nStone Fox Capital here at Seeking Alpha is out with an article pivoting off Katy Huberty's estimation of a 2% earnings loss if the top 20 apps on the App Store were able to eschew in-app payments. Stone Fox would also like you to care about that seemingly small number:\n\n Apple won most of their legal case with Epic Games based on the ruling announced on September 10, but the tech giant lost the ultimate battle. The stock remains priced for perfection while the company continues to have growth paths chipped away from the business.\n\nMy last article on this subject was called “Chipping Away at App Store.” This is what is happening and the trend is now clear. There is a mood globally to take Apple down a peg, and it is happening too slowly for many people to realize it is happening.\nMy own way of modeling the worst case is through my DCF model. It’s modeled as a 25% hit to Services in the first year, with services gross margin reduced from 68% to 65%, followed by a slightly increased growth rate in the segment because of composition effects — the rest of Services grows faster than App Store. I used to model that happening in fiscal 2024, but I have moved that up to fiscal 2023, beginning less than 13 months from now.\nHere is the effect on fair value on my base case:\n\nEven with the very slow start for the reason Stone Fox says — the share price has gotten way out ahead of cash flows — my base case still shows an 11% CAGR in fair value through the end of fiscal 2025. The App Store collapse takes that down to an 8% CAGR, 12% lower by 2025.\nCircling back, Stone Fox puts a button on this more succinctly than I can:\n\n The key investor takeaway is that Apple has a bright future. The company will continue generating profits with operating cash flows topping $100 billion annually, but the tech giant will struggle to generate the growth needed to warrant the current stock price. The 2% hit to earnings might not seem meaningful, but the amount is very harmful to a stock priced for perfection.\n\nHow To Take This Seriously\nIn my last article on this subject, someone cheekily replied in the comments, “‘Please take this seriously.’ What does that even mean?” That’s a good question. The first part of the answer is to stop pretending it’s not happening.\n“If your time horizon is short, now is a good time to take profits.” I have been using that phrase frequently since Apple hit $140. The last chart just formalizes it with math, but my opinion is that Apple will remain range-bound for some time, between $125 and $155, roughly. I still mean it: if your time horizon is short, now is a good time to take profits.\nBut I also believe that no other company is as prepared for the future of technology, regardless of what that brings. That is a far longer discussion. I have been buying Apple shares on the dip since 2005, which is two splits ago. My last buy was in January 2019, when Apple reported that they would miss guidance for the first time in many years. At the time, the commentariat was telling me that Apple’s best days were behind them. I tried to explain that Apple was in a transitional phase, part of a strategy they launched around 2015 to focus more on the growth of the iPhone user base than sales. The strategy would pay off soon, I predicted, and it did in fiscal 2021. That seems like a very long time ago now.\nA consequence of buying the dip from 2005 to 2019 is that I own way too many Apple shares that I could never bring myself to sell. I am massively overweight Apple. There is a “What To Do With The Apple Shares” clause in my will. It is our largest asset, worth more than the house. That has not made me nervous until the last few months, when the tide seemed to start turning on Apple on this issue. I also used to be someone who did not take this threat seriously. I am going to start shaving my position as opportunities present themselves, and one may happen this week with the iPhone launch on Tuesday.\nTo be clear, I will remain overweight Apple, just less so, and I remain bullish in the long term. But I no longer feel the safety I once did with this wildly overweight position.\nIn contrast, if you are a long term investor who does not have a massively overweight position, watch, wait and fight confirmation bias every day. If you think this begins and ends with Epic, you haven’t been paying attention.\nPlease take this seriously.\nI will be back in a few days with hopefully happier news from the iPhone launch on Tuesday. The big question is whether Apple can begin shipping iPhone before the quarter is out.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"AAPL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":207,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":9,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/886111104"}