- Elon Musk said he wants to chat with Tim Cook about Apple's App Store fee.
- Musk said he wants the company to change how Apple takes its fee from X subscriptions.
Elon Musk wants Apple to make an exception on its App Store fee for users of X, formerly Twitter.
Musk said he wants Apple CEO Tim Cook to change the fees it takes when users of its App Store subscribe to creator pages on X.
"Apple does take 30%, but I will speak with @tim_cook and see if that can be adjusted to be just 30% of what keeps in order to maximize what creators receive," Musk said on X in a post calling for more people to subscribe to creators on the social media site.
While it seems unlikely Apple would be willing to change the fee, the company has made some exceptions for X in the past. Last month, Apple appeared to give Musk's company a pass during its rebrand on an App Store policy that prohibited single-character names. It allowed the rebranded Twitter to list as "X" on the App Store.
Apple takes a 30% cut on all app and in-app purchases on iOS devices. That includes taking 30% of what X users pay for subscriptions on apps during the first year and 15% for following years, according to The Verge.
Earlier this year, Musk began promoting an X feature that allows users to pay to subscribe to exclusive content from users on the site that pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue. The company had previously called the feature "Super Follows" after it was initially launched in 2021.
On Wednesday, Musk said on X that the company would not begin taking a 10% cut of the subscription revenue from creators after 12 months — as he had previously said — but would wait to take a cut until the creators had received $100,000 from the program in addition to the free year.
Under Musk, the social media company has also piloted a program to pay Twitter Blue users a share of their ad revenue and some creators reported in July that X had paid them thousands of dollars through the program.
It's not the first time Musk has taken a dig at Apple's fee. Last year, Musk appeared to declare war on Apple in a post that was later deleted and accused Apple of monopolizing the app market and opposing free speech in a series of tweets. At the time, Musk appeared to make amends with Apple and its CEO when he posted a photo of himself at the company's headquarters and thanked Cook for a tour.
But, the Tesla CEO's beef with Apple goes back several years. Musk has accused Apple of taking Tesla's rejects and in 2016 Musk reportedly tried to take Cook's job at Apple. Though both Musk and Apple denied the reports.
Musk's isn't the only executive to take issue with Apple's App Store fees. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also called Apple's control over the App Store "problematic."
Spokespeople for Apple and X did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.