In a recent interview with the Toronto Star, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke on a wide variety of topics, ranging from application tracking transparency to Apple’s ongoing legal battle for App Store policies with the creator of Fortnite, Epic Games.
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In particular, Cook said Epic Games’ desire for Apple to allow developers to offer their own in-app payment systems “would turn the App Store into a flea market”:
At the heart of Epic’s complaint is that they would like developers to enter their own payment information. But that would make the App Store a flea market and you already know the level of trust you have in the flea market.
The volume of people entering such a market would be dramatically lower, which would be bad for the user, because the innovation would be lost as we just heard with the four developers. And developers would be left out because they wouldn’t have a large audience with whom to sell. So no one wins in this environment.
Apple’s App Store review guidelines require applications to use the in-app purchase system, with direct payment systems prohibited.
Cook said he is confident Apple should prevail in its lawsuit against Epic Games, as long as it is able to communicate the facts clearly. The U.S. bank trial is scheduled to begin on May 3 in the federal court in Northern California.
Cook also revealed in the interview that Apple reviews 100,000 apps submitted for review each week and rejects about 40,000. He said that, curated by the App Store, users have “a safe and trusted place” to discover apps.
Timed with Cook’s interview with the Toronto Star, Apple has released a press release announcing the success of the App Store in Canada. In the press release, seen by the blog iPhone in Canada, Apple 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 was launched in 2008.