Apple, Meta once planned to build businesses together: Report

Tech giants - Apple and Meta talked over creating a subscription-based version of Facebook that would be free of ads.

San Francisco: Tech-giants, Apple and Meta (formerly Facebook), who are currently at odds on privacy changes in iOS and App Store, once intended to “build businesses together”. However, Apple was there in discussions with Mark Zuckerberg-run social network about how it could make more capital from its ad income. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple and Facebook examined “revenue-sharing arrangements, including a potential ad-free, subscription version of Facebook”.

They talked over creating a subscription-based version of Facebook that would be free of ads. Apple also reportedly asserted that it was entitled to a cut of certain fractions of Facebook’s ad revenue from so-called “boosted posts”.

A boost enables a user to cater to an increased number of people that see a post on Facebook or Instagram. “Apple, which doesn’t take a cut of advertising from developers, argued that Facebook boosts should be considered in-app purchases, according to a person familiar with the matter,” the report announced late on Friday.

The tech giants could not reach a consensus on discussions that took place “mostly” between 2016 and 2018. Facebook is trying to mend its ad-tracking systems after Apple brought major privacy changes in its App Store.

Apple started the “Ask App not to Track” prompt as part of iOS 14.5 in 2021 which has had a crucial impact on various firms, encompassing Meta which said that Apple iOS privacy alterations will cost it a whopping $10 billion in 2022.

“We believe the impact of iOS overall as a headwind on our business in 2022 is on the order of $10 billion, so it’s a pretty significant headwind for our business,” Meta CFO David Wehner announced earlier this year.

Apple’s iOS 14.5 update, circulated in April 2021, came with an App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature that has influenced digital promoting it for tech giants.

According to the WSJ announcement, Apple’s privacy move happened in a “sharp business slump that has shaved approximately $600 billion from the company’s (Meta’s) market value in less than a year”.

A Meta spokesman said that the firm has “made significant changes over the past five years to protect people’s data while also allowing businesses of all sizes to grow”.