Twitter Blue plan is on halt right now but when it resumes you will have to pay an increased price of $11 per month if you subscribe from iOS, according to a report from The Information.
The report noted that the subscription plan will cost $7 per month if you purchase from the web. But it will be costlier on iOS to offset Apple’s App Store fees. Notably, Apple charges 30% fees to the developers for the first year of subscription, but it drops to 15% from the second year.
When Twitter launched its new subscription plan with a verification mark on November 9, it charged users $7.99 per month. If Twitter were to offset App Store fees, it should charge $10.38 — but the new price change of $11 sounds like a rounded-off figure.
Twitter owner Elon Musk recently went on a tirade against Apple for pausing advertisements on Twitter, alleging them of hating “free speech in America.” Musk also accused the tech giant of threatening to “withhold Twitter from its App Store.” However, after Musk met Tim Cook on a tour of Apple’s Cupertino campus, all things went back to being good and dandy.
Musk told the world that Cook clarified that there was no consideration to boot Twitter off the App Store. Plus, Apple resumed ads on the social media platform. Apple is a big spender on Twitter, as The Platformer reporter Zoë Schiffer noted that the company buys ads worth nearly $100 million a year.
The Tesla CEO hasn’t been a fan of Apple’s App Store fees either. Last month, he described them as a “secret tax” levied by the iPhone maker. However, this is not the first time Musk has criticized the App Store commission. Last year, he sided with Epic in the game company’s battle with Apple and said that these fees are “a de facto global tax on the internet.”
However, just like many disgruntled companies like Spotify, Twitter will have to play by App Store rules if it were to offer subscriptions through iOS. As my colleague Taylor Hatmaker noted in her story last month, “You can be mad that Apple takes 30% of what you make on the iPhone, but 30% of zero is still zero.” That Blue tick is looking more expensive now.