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not that i said, guys.

is the internet dead now? why after 4 years people are choosing between wechat and iphone again?

can we have fewer boring multiple-choice questions like this? . .

since monday, i have seen news that the negotiations between apple and wechat have reached a deadlock, which is very serious.

i knew about the negotiations, but the reports about the negotiation results were too outrageous, and some of them were completely illogical.

some people say that it is a foregone conclusion that apple will charge tencent 30% of its service fee.if tencent does not agree, apple phones will be forced to uninstall wechat.

others say,tencent has played a very decisive role in the game this time. wechat may not support iphone16 and ios18.2. iphone users should never update.

originally this was just a matter in the technology circle, but the media do understand the traffic code after all.

the report is full of words like "maybe" and "probably", and the topic is fast-forwarded to "which one do you choose, iphone or wechat?" has become a major issue of people's livelihood.

think about it, who the hell wouldn’t want to click in and take a look when seeing this?

it turns out that we guys have indeed made up for the traffic.

in the past two days, topics related to "wechat apple" have directly become the headlines in cyber ​​village and are posted on the homepages of major platforms.

one moment it’s “which one do you need more, apple or wechat?” and the next moment it’s “what if apple really removes wechat from its app stores?”

image source: weibo hot search time machine ▼

netizens also flocked to these topics. after all, wechat on the left and apple on the right are more or less related to themselves, so they have to say a few fair words.

a national creative conference has thus begun.

some people say that apple thinks too highly of itself. in china, you can choose not to use an iphone, but you absolutely cannot choose not to use wechat.

some people say they support apple's hard fight, so they can switch to another brand of mobile phone;

but some people hold the opposite view. apple is the world's largest company by market value, and even without the chinese market, it will still crush tencent.

some people have gone further and have begun to speculate that if the iphone really cannot use wechat, then alibaba and bytedance will immediately launch a chat tool and quickly occupy the market...

anyway, after reading through the comments, i found that netizens all have their own opinions, and they all want to argue about who is better between wechat and apple.

but i really want to advise everyone to stop arguing, because there was a problem with this matter from the beginning.

since wechat cannot be used on iphone, it is totally impossible.

while writing this article, i also saw the official news that refuted the rumor.

now let me analyze why.

first, in terms of consequences, it is impossible to happen.

the number of overlapping users of apple and iphone is in the billions, which exceeds the total population of many countries.

if iphone suddenly cannot use wechat, countless people’s daily social interaction, work, life, and travel will be affected.

this kind of loss is so huge that it is impossible to measure it. do you think the authorities will let this happen? believe me, if it really comes to this, the authorities will come forward to solve it in advance, and it will not be our turn to worry about it. . .

second, judging from the incident itself, there is no need for the two sides to fight to the point where they cannot coexist.

first of all, we need to figure out what happened between apple and tencent.

in fact, it’s still the same old thing - apple tax.

every time an iphone user buys an app or game, or tops up their account, apple takes a cut.

the commission is divided into two levels: 30% and 15% (for small and medium-sized developers with annual income below 1 million us dollars).

the problem lies in the mini-program games on wechat and tiktok.

bloomberg reported in early august that apple began warning about "irregular payment practices" in wechat and tiktok games.

simply put,the mini-games on these two platforms have ways to avoid apple’s in-app purchase channels, so that users can pay and developers don’t have to pay taxes to apple.

apple probably didn’t know about this, but mini-games have taken off recently.

according to the "china game industry report from january to june 2024", the actual sales revenue of small games in the first half of the year was 16.603 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 60.5%.among them, the revenue generated by in-app purchases was 9.098 billion yuan, an increase of 81.56% year-on-year.

you know what apple did when it found out that it didn’t get a piece of the pie. soon, an apple spokesperson came out with their review guidelines:

your software has external payment channels, which violates our "audit guidelines". if you don't solve these problems, i'm sorry, you won't be able to update the software.

but tencent seems to disagree.

in fact, i also understand that these small games are developed based on the wechat platform.

if i were him, i wouldn't be happy about it either. i built the environment and opened the channels, so why do you, apple, want to make a profit now that the business is taking off?

so they have been negotiating for the past few months, and my guess is that tencent wants apple to take less commission.

because compared with the eu, the united states and south korea, china's apple tax is too high.

in 2021, after south korea passed the amendment to the telecommunications business act, apple's commission was reduced to 26% and 11%, and supports third-party payment.

in january this year, apple's commission in the united states also dropped to 27% and 12%, supports third-party payment.

in march, the eu fined apple 1.8 billion euros. under the digital markets act, apple's commission was reduced to 17% and 10% , and supports third-party payment.

in june, japan also expressed its intention to follow everyone's footsteps and legislate to require apple to reduce taxes.

although apple has some practices of overcharging in the eu, these have nothing to do with mini programs.

at present, china still charges 30% and 15%, and does not support third-party payment. if wechat and douyin games continue to charge at this rate, they will be somewhat unhappy.

of course, don’t expect a good outcome from the negotiations. based on past experience, every time apple lowered its commission, it was not negotiated between giants, but was hit by the iron fist of the law.

now that i have sorted out the matter for everyone, it is just a negotiation caused by the old apple tax, which is really not a big deal.

as a result, the media made up stories and quickly moved forward to the choice between apple and wechat.

i can only say that everyone’s time was wasted, their emotions were aroused, and the official also came out to refute the rumors.

a world where only certain media wins has been achieved.

i don’t know if you still remember that we encountered the same topic 4 years ago.

at that time, trump was still the president of the united states. he suddenly issued a very vague executive order, which might, suspected, probably, or perhaps, ban wechat.

as a result, in some media reports, this question sentence directly became a declarative sentence, asking everyone how to choose between apple and wechat.

the person who gave the bad review at that time didn't want to complain, but countless people believed it, and some even started looking at their phones.

four years ago, when we saw netizens being fooled by the media, we wrote an article to explain the situation to everyone.

unexpectedly, 4 years later, the media brought up the same topic again, so we wrote another article to sort things out for everyone.

as long as a topic caters to everyone's emotions and can cause countless people to debate, it will never disappear and will definitely be brought out for hype again at some point in time.

in this case, all i can say is, see you in four years.