Apple and Meta aren’t exactly the best of friends, but according to The Wall Street Journal, the two companies were in talks between 2016 and 2018 about how Apple could make more money from Meta products like Facebook on the App Store.
The Wall Street Journal writes that some Apple executives were concerned about the fact that Meta products, which are among the most popular in the App Store, were not generating revenue for Apple. This was the reason for the desire to somehow share the income of Mark Zuckerberg’s company.
Accordingly, the Apple managers said they wanted to “build joint business models”. Specifically, for example, an ad-free subscription version of Facebook was discussed. Because Apple keeps a portion of subscription revenue for apps in its app store, this product could have generated “significant revenue” for the iPhone maker, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The companies were also negotiating whether Apple was entitled to a portion of Facebook revenue from so-called boosted posts, which allow businesses or users to pay to reach more people. Apple argued that these types of posts are in-app purchases, so it should take a cut. Meta argued that they were ads, from which Apple gets nothing.
Around the same time, Facebook is said to have considered its own privacy changes. However, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has decided to delay any significant changes to data practices so as not to impact his advertising business.
The social network has unsuccessfully defended itself against Apple’s anti-tracking plans in recent years. The group blamed the new data protection settings for declining sales.
