Netflix has often been a milking cow for Apple. With a 30% cut for every subscription with Netflix made through an iOS device as an example, Apple is able to sustain a billion-dollar revenue from the App Store alone. But Netflix seems to be no longer having it as it finds a way from giving apple a slice of the pie it earns with every subscription.
Given the premise that Apple only earns its part of the pay when the subscription is conducted using any of its iOS products, Netflix is detracting users from subscribing with their Apple device to instead force users to subscribe via its own website.
Multiple reports have testified to the fact that the streaming service does redirect its supposed subscribers to its homepage, even when the users themselves were using an Apple device. So, instead of the app, Netflix makes use of the user’s preferred web browser and point them to its homepage in order to make the registration.
According to an analyst, Ben Bajarin, “Netflix looking to bypass the Apple Store 30% is not surprising, Amazon has done a good job at this, but it brings up an interesting debate about the value of a marketplace and what is fair as a cut for the marketplace provider. Physical retail cut is 40-50% generally.”
However, Netflix is not necessarily privy with the move which, as its customer support agent had disclosed, was a process months-long in the making as apparently had started since June 2018 and is currently ongoing to as many as 33 countries at the present. As it appears, the said test is also bound to end on September 30, 2018.
Cutting Apple out of its business equation is not necessarily not without its risk even for a well-established and now-giant company as Netflix. Whether this move will result to something positive or negative on the part of Netflix is anyone’s guess for now. But it is definitely a gamble.