In a recent interview with the Toronto StarSpoke to Apple CEO Tim Cook on a wide variety of topics ranging from App Tracking Transparency to Apple’s ongoing legal battle over App Store policies with Fortnite creator Epic Games.
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Specifically, Cook said Epic Games’ desire for Apple to allow developers to offer their own payment systems in apps would “turn the App Store into a flea market”:
The crux of the Epic complaint is that they want developers to each enter their own payment information. But that would make the App Store a flea market and you know the level of trust you have in the flea market.
The number of people entering such a market would be dramatically lower which would be bad for the user as they would miss out on the innovation as we just heard from the four developers. And the developers would be left out because they wouldn’t have a large audience to sell to. So nobody wins in that environment.
Apple’s App Store review guidelines require apps to use Apple’s in-app purchase system, prohibiting direct payment systems.
Cook said he is confident Apple should get the upper hand in its lawsuit against Epic Games, as long as it is able to communicate the facts clearly. The U.S. banking trial is scheduled for May 3 in federal court in Northern California.
Cook also revealed in the interview that Apple reviews 100,000 apps every week that are submitted for review and rejects about 40,000 of them. He said that by managing the App Store, users have “a safe and trusted place” to discover apps.
Timed to Cook’s interview with the Toronto StarApple issued a press release touting the success of the App Store in Canada. In the press release, spotted by the blog iPhone in CanadaApple said the App Store now supports more than 243,000 jobs in Canada and added that developers across the country have generated more than $ 2 billion CAD in total revenue since the App Store launched in 2008.