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seg special author qing liu

in the past two days, an explosive rumor has spread: wechat may not support iphone 16, and apple users will not be able to use it after upgrading.

the severity of this news is as serious as a nuclear bomb in china, where there are nearly 250 million iphone users and 1.327 billion wechat users. with such large user groups, it would be disastrous for both parties if they could only choose one of the two.

but things are not so pessimistic. at present, apple customer service said "we have not received any official notification yet", and tencent clearly stated that it was a rumor.

this shows that even if the rumors are rampant, based on past experience, the incident is unlikely to go to such an extreme. companies that are almost at the top of their respective fields have interests that overlap far more than most people imagine, and overly dramatic and irrational decisions are unlikely to occur.

in fact, the industry has long said that "apple and wechat will eventually fight each other", but it is not as many people imagine. this battle is not a conflict between app adaptation or not, but a competition between the two sides' different ecological models and innovation paradigms.

apple tax controversy

this rumor is not groundless.

the root of the problem is actually the apple tax, which refers to the 15% to 30% commission that apple charges for digital content consumption on all apps on the app store.

earlier reports said that apple is increasing pressure on tencent and bytedance, requiring the two companies to cooperate in plugging payment loopholes in wechat and tiktok, and said that if the ability of developers and users to bypass the apple ecosystem is not eliminated, it will refuse to provide wechat updates in the future.

this is actually aimed at applications such as wechat mini programs, some of which bypass apple's payment system. apple is trying to embed the tentacles of the apple tax into applications in the wechat ecosystem. after all, wechat has more than one billion users, and apple cannot remain indifferent to this piece of cake.

but this could be a disaster for small and medium-sized enterprises. there is no charge for launching a mini program, but if apple has to pay up to 30% of the apple tax in addition to other expenses, many companies will face huge pressure to survive.

what cannot be avoided is that there is a contrast between business logic and social image. apple ios itself has an elitist color, requiring higher development and download costs, and even higher publicity and image recognition. its high tax is reasonable.

but mini-programs in the wechat ecosystem are actually grassroots ecosystems - they do not require excessively high technical barriers and development and download costs, and can quickly access relatively open platforms and reach a wide range of users, which makes it easier to meet grassroots needs such as small and medium-sized enterprises.

when the former imposes taxes on the latter, it is easy to cause huge controversy. this is why channel fees are called "taxes". from the wording, we can feel apple's strong position.

moreover, the apple tax itself is controversial. china's current apple tax rate has reached 30%, which is the highest in the world. it is said that apple's "taxes" in china are as high as 40 billion a year.

the tax rate is 27% in the united states and 26% in south korea. however, eu regulators forced apple to reduce the tax rate to 17% through antitrust fines.

it can be seen that although apple tax is a taboo for apple, it is not unbreakable and there is a considerable degree of arbitrariness in it. this mainly depends on the outcome of the game, whether apple can reach an agreement with other giants and local regulators.

the dispute between wechat and apple is a concentrated manifestation of this game. in the atmosphere of "the world has suffered from apple tax for a long time", the dispute gradually came to the surface.

closed vs. open

of course, it is not objective to simply describe apple as a villain who "collects protection fees".

objectively speaking, the reason why apple tax exists is, of course, because apple has built a sufficiently excellent application ecosystem. this ecosystem is closed, secure, and the experience is smooth enough. this is one of apple's biggest advantages and is unique, which makes apple users particularly loyal to it.

of course, building such an ecosystem and channels requires costs. as the apple empire gradually takes shape, it is time for apple to reap the market. today, services account for about 25% of apple's revenue, and its importance is self-evident.

apple's ecosystem construction relies to a large extent on hardware; but with the development of the internet ecosystem, the ecosystem at the pure software level has gradually taken shape, and the relationship between the two has begun to blur, which makes it difficult for apple tax to escape the perception of "exorbitant taxation."

for example, it is hard to say whether the wechat mini program ecosystem is the result of apple’s “building roads and bridges” or the result of wechat’s “community operation”. after all, wechat is also available on android, and wechat itself exists across channels. apple’s unconditional tax collection will not help it escape the outside world’s suspicion of its “eating habits”.

in 2017, apple and wechat also had a dispute. at that time, apple believed that wechat's reward function was also "virtual payment" and demanded a 30% commission. later, wechat temporarily closed the reward function on the ios version. the creation rewards of self-media also have to go through apple's tax, which has caused huge controversy.

more fundamentally speaking, this is actually a constant conflict between closed and open, two different ecological operating modes.this question was actually raised during apple's early entrepreneurial process. apple chose a closed model that seemed to deviate from the spirit of the internet, which was highly questioned at the time.

later, apple ensured the feasibility of the closed route with unquestionable quality control and achieved great success. but today, this problem has not been fundamentally solved, but has only been postponed.

however, with the rise of more open, software-based national applications represented by wechat, the struggle between closed and open has re-emerged. the apple tax relies on a closed logic, but it has begun to be stretched to its limits in response to a more open software ecosystem. whether it is public opinion or regulators, apple is gradually losing ground.

in addition to domestic applications such as wechat and tiktok, foreign companies such as spotify and epic games have also had disputes with apple; the european union, the netherlands, and south korea have all directly punished apple. in may of this year, china filed its first antitrust lawsuit against the "apple tax" by consumers. although the consumers lost the case, the court determined that "apple has a dominant market position."

it can be seen that the dispute between closed and open will continue.

back to business, not ethics

compromise, rather than a life-and-death struggle, is the solution that both apple and tencent are willing to choose in the short term. after all, in addition to the huge size of both parties, the two also have extensive cooperation in many fields such as security, games, and cloud. a cool plot that is either this or that, either black or white, is unlikely to appear in the real business world.

just like the tipping controversy in 2017, it ended in a compromise. apple cancelled the tax on tipping, and tencent announced that its newly launched mini-programs would not support virtual payment services on ios for the time being. both sides took a step back.

in the long run, apple and wechat may eventually face off. because in the long-term cooperation and competition, the two sides have gradually formed significantly different industry ecosystems and innovation models: in general, wechat's ecosystem is more open and grassroots, while apple's is more closed and elite. behind the two models stand different product concepts.

there is no absolute right or wrong in the differences in the two sides' philosophies, but in the historical process of technological and commercial evolution, there are bound to be intersections, integrations and even collisions, and it is difficult to predict who will win or lose.

but for chinese users, there is a tendency that should be avoided, that is, using literary imagination to make moral judgments on commercial competition issues, and often holding a vote of "choose between apple and wechat". some bystanders are even not idle, secretly fanning the flames and trying to play the role of the fisherman who benefits.

in fact, how to continuously promote innovation in a closed model and how to create amazing products in an open model is a serious product philosophy issue and a business model competition issue, but it is not an ideological issue.