Finances

Apple has extended a new proposal to Dutch regulators, who have continued to fine the company for non-compliance with its order.

The tech giant submitted a new offer to the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) pertaining to the regulator’s order to allow dating apps to use third-party payment systems instead of forcing them to use the Apple Store, according to Tech Crunch. The ACM acknowledged receiving Apple’s proposal but shared no details publicly.

“We will now assess the substance of these proposals,” ACM said in a statement, according to Tech Crunch. “In that context, we will also sit down with various market participants. Our aim is to complete this assessment as soon as possible.”

Bumble’s stock jumped 20 percent after an earnings report from the company showed an increase in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021, finishing far ahead of analyst expectations.

According to Yahoo!, Bumble’s overall revenue for Q4 in 2021 increased 25.7 percent to $208.2 million compared to $165.60 million for the same quarter the year before, including the negative impact from foreign currency movements year over year. Total paying users also increased 10.6 percent to 3 million, compared to 2.7 million at the end of 2020. Total average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) was $22.83 in Q4 2021, compared to $20.02 in Q4 2020.

While Badoo’s app revenue decreased 3.5 percent to $57.7 million compared with $59.8 million from 2020, Bumble app revenue was on the upswing with a 42.2 percent increase in revenue to $150.5 million in the fourth quarter last year, compared to $105.8 million the year before, not only offsetting but far surpassing the losses.

Dating platform Bumble announced that it will be stopping operations in Russia and Belarus because of the invasion of Ukraine. The company has removed its apps from the Apple Store and Google Play in both countries.

In addition to its signature apps, Bumble has removed its new and popular French app Fruitz, as well as Badoo which is popular across Europe, from app stores in Russia and Belarus, according to The Washington Post.

According to ABC local news in Texas, Bumble said it stands to lose about $20 million in revenue from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine due to the halting of operations. The Washington Post estimates this is less than .1 percent of the Bumble app’s revenue, and 2.8 percent of its revenue across all of its apps.

Dating app Tinder said that it would be ending the controversial aged-based pricing structure for its premium service Tinder Plus by the end of the second quarter.

The news follows a recent UK study that found users were paying wildly different prices to access Tinder’s premium service, typically based on age, which raised questions about discriminatory pricing.

According to Buzzfeed, the Mozilla Foundation and Consumers International took up where the UK consumer watchdog Which? and Australian consumer advocacy organization Choice left off when they first pointed out the issue of price discrepancies on the app. The researchers at Mozilla and CI didn’t find statistically different prices based on race, gender or sexual orientation, but did find it among different age groups.

Online dating might be heading towards a sea change as VC firms invested about $31 million in 43 rounds of funding towards new dating apps in 2021. 

According to website Crunchbase which studies technology trends, the majority of companies raised angel, pre-seed and seed rounds, which means venture capitalist firms were interested in early-stage developments. (There were only three who received Series-A funding.)

Crunchbase also noted that every ten years there seems to be a shift in consumer preferences when it comes to dating app technology, and it usually follows the larger social app trends. Ten years ago, Instagram was the hot new app and dating apps like Tinder gamified their platforms to put photos front and center, where users could just look and swipe. 

Tech giant Apple faced another hefty fine this week from Dutch regulators over its non-compliance with a December ruling regarding its Apple Store operations. The company now owes over 25 million euros for failing to change its practices, according to Tech Crunch. 

The Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) ordered Apple to allow dating apps to use third party payment systems for in-app purchases. Prior to the ruling, developers had no choice but to go through the Apple Store for payment processing, and in addition, Apple charged them a thirty percent commission for all in-app purchases. Match Group had joined other companies in asking for an investigation into the company’s practices, claiming they were losing revenue and were unable to directly help customers with billing questions.

The ACM ordered Apple to pay the Authority five million euros per week until the issue is fixed, which has now gone unresolved five weeks past the deadline, bringing their total fines to about 25 million euros, according to Tech Crunch. Apple has fought the ruling, although it did make adjustments to its Store and allowed dating apps to use third-party payment platforms. However, Apple made the process difficult by forcing the app developers to pay a 27 percent fee on sales made through third parties, so dating app developers would still take a financial hit.