“We receive a commission of up to 30% of the applications that users are buying from the developers of our platform using our payment infrastructure. In the future we will expand payments for non-gaming applications and percentage that we get from the developers, can become variable.
If Facebook will reduce the 30% commission on music and multimedia applications, this will allow the company to break away from other platforms. Today Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google are fighting for the status of the dominant supplier of digital content on the network and mobile sector.
Let’s recognize how things with the commission are going in the other competing companies: Apple gets a fixed commission – the same 30% of sales on its iOS; Google – 30% of the Android, but only 5% from the game in the Google +; Amazon has an unusual rules, in which the company controls the pricing of the application, and leaves for itself only 30% of the amount for which sold applications, or 80% of the price charged by the software development company.
It should be noted that all these schemes do not divide the applications on the game, news applications, encyclopedias, or any other classes, which are uniform for all similar products. If Facebook will introduce various policy committees, it will change the formation of prices on application according to their type. And this is something new.
Apparently, Facebook believes that newspapers and magazines should be treated not as a gaming company Zynga. Members of the Board of Facebook, such as the CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings and CEO of Washington Post Don Graham, probably will give their voice for that option, especially if they’re going to continue to sell subscriptions to their publications on Facebook.
Lowering the Commission will help Facebook to get more content partners. If the company will increase the diversity of its proposed paid digital content, it will be able to persuade more users to pay for it.
Of course, the question of the commission from sales of content is a sensitive issue. How to define “fair” commission on the sale of music content? And to sell a digital subscription to The Washington Post?
If Facebook really refuse a commission, they will launch this wave of selling in the area of digital content on the network.
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