After a grotesque impersonation episode that was seen a few hours after commissioning, it seemed Elon Musk I gave him good to reactivate Twitter Blue for this week. However, it seems that the tycoon they retreated and a possible reason could be the 30% commission that Apple takes for purchases through the apps themselves, although they are officially taking advantage of the fact that Apple has stopped paying them for advertising from the microblogging social network.

Twitter has released a message internally that its subscription service is being delayed due to the need to make some adjustments. Among the changes are two that require a phone number for Twitter Blue subscribers and another that raises the price from $7.99 to $8. The plan was to restart the service this Friday, but this was discovered by the company on the social network Apple decided to suspend its advertising on Twitter, to which Musk responded by threatening to remove the app from the App Store..

In Spain and Latin America, the situation is seen differently, but in the United States the iPhone share is around 50%, so half of the smartphone users in that country would be left without access to the official Twitter app. An alternative is to use a web browser to access and use the social network, but here it is possible to encounter additional problems, since Apple has boycotted its own web browser in order not to compete with “native” applications.

Another aspect that is out there is the fact that Apple keeps 30% of the amount of in-app purchases during the first year, a percentage that drops to 15% later.. Shortly after receiving the news of Apple’s ad removal, Musk did some research to see how much it was costing him to offer Twitter Blue through an app hosted on Apple’s App Store. The tycoon discovered, or rather remembered, that the Cupertino giant kept 30% of the amount of each subscription sold under exposed conditions.

Apple hasn’t commented on the decision, and Twitter doesn’t seem to be particularly transparent because Elon Musk is the absolute dictator of the company. It looks like data Apple received 4% of Twitter advertising revenue in Q1 2022 and several advertisers decided to retire because they saw the absurdity of running a social network in general and Twitter Blue in particular.

We’ll see how this clash between Elon Musk and Apple ends, although it doesn’t hurt to remember that the mogul stood up for Epic Games when he decided to take the giant of the bitten apple to court. At its heart, Twitter Blue is an attempt to minimize reliance on advertisers, but its management is perhaps a more compelling reason to launch than its existence.