> Netflix Inc. and video game makers Epic Games Inc. and Valve Corp. are among companies that have recently tried to bypass the app stores or complained about the cost of the tolls Apple and Google charge.
Valve appear to even be complaining about the 30% fee, that is _equivalent_ to their own fee.
The underlying Windows platform still allows for external installs. And the other big names, EA and Ubisoft, already operate their own storefronts.
Android technically allows for the same, see the existence of f-droid for example, but the experience is less smooth (more dialogs to tap through) than when using Google Play.
You can release an executable that can run on Windows, Linux, or OS X without Steam. You can't release an executable that can run on iOS or Android without going through the App Stores.
I think the Android market is large enough that it could support a healthy second app market. The 30% pricing that Google is currently able to charge indicates the complexity of creating a new market - a successful market requires that consumers, app makers and phone manufacturers all act together.
This can be difficult since in the short term it's easiest for every market participant to just use the Play store. Creating a new market takes upfront $ and is a risky business.
How well did that work out back in the day? I am much more willing to trust that an app can’t do anything crazy on iOS because of the sandbox, on a PC, not so much.
Also the friction of buying is lower. I’m not going to put my credit card information in every random website. I will keep a credit card on file with Apple and just use my fingerprint to authorize the purchase.
Nothing is stopping you from downloading and installing software from a website on Android. There's an argument to be made that nobody actually does that, that shops can't afford not to publish in stores, and therefore it's not a real alternative, but then it would equally apply to Steam where a lot of people exclusively purchase games.
> You can't release an executable that can run on iOS or Android without going through the App Stores.
You absolutely can release Android apps without going through any app store, and if you go through an app store, it doesn't have to be Google's. There are different pros and cons for Google's store, handset maker’s stores (e.g., Samsung has their own), other stores (e.g., Amazon's), and direct distribution of your own apps without a store.
That's true for retail but that hasn't been a thing for most developers since the 90's. And traditional retail includes things like physical shelf space in a real store with real boxes etc. Since the late 90's/early 00's developers have been selling and distributing (PC/Mac) software online where the typical processing fees are usually reported as no more than ~10-15%.
The app store narrative has been 'look at how much better developers have it than the old days of retail' when the reality is most of the smaller developers could never realistically sell through the traditional retail channel anyways. (there was a lot more to it than the larger cut involved) The other reality is that mobile devices are locked down in ways that PCs historically have not been (i.e. difficult to impossible for most end users to install software outside of the app store) and the only realistic option they had was to go through the platform owner. (i.e. Apple/Google/Amazon/Microsoft)
I'm all for the app stores getting a cut but the 30% number represents more the fact that the platform owners are gatekeepers rather than any real value being offered.
That's true for retail but that hasn't been a thing for most developers since the 90's. And traditional retail includes things like physical shelf space in a real store with real boxes etc. Since the late 90's/early 00's developers have been selling and distributing (PC/Mac) software online where the typical processing fees are usually reported as no more than ~10-15%.
Most console games are still sold retail because people want the ability to trade them in. In the early 2000's high speed internet wasn't ubiquitous and most software was still being sold in retail.
The app store narrative has been 'look at how much better developers have it than the old days of retail' when the reality is most of the smaller developers could never realistically sell through the traditional retail channel anyways. (there was a lot more to it than the larger cut involved) The other reality is that mobile devices are locked down in ways that PCs historically have not been (i.e. difficult to impossible for most end users to install software outside of the app store) and the only realistic option they had was to go through the platform owner. (i.e. Apple/Google/Amazon/Microsoft)
So the app stores have been a net positive for small developers? How many people are (or should be) paranoid about downloading software from a random site and then putting their credit card information on the same random site? How many that are willing would even go through the trouble of entering their credit card number as opposed to just authorizing the payment through Apple/Google?
Console manufacturers have also demanded a cut of software sold on their platform since the mid 80s. You couldn't sell a game on a console without having signed code on the cartridge/disk and I believe most of the console makers forced you to use them for manufacturering..
This makes sense in retail. The operating costs associated with retail are more than twice that of a pure digital store. Digital stores don't need to worry about theft, inventory, logistics, opportunity costs of floor space, bad returns, etc. I bet Apple's entire online operation cost less to run than all of the Walmarts in New Jersey.
Plus, you can do cool things like individualize what's offered to customers in a digital store. While the best Walmart can manage are stores customized a store for the region.
Justifying price you charge for something based solely on cost, isn't the way that capitalism works.
Price is purely a function of supply and demand. If app makers decide that it's not worth the 30% cut that Apple charges to reach the < 20% of phone users that use iOS, they either can increase their price or not sell on Apple platforms.
But realistically, the developers who are making the most money are the ones doing in app purchases for coins, loot boxes, etc. It's not exactly costing them anything to "produce" more coins.
No, justifying price based on cost is usually valid because of real competitive pressures in the world. Very few things deviate too far from underlying costs. Apple is a rare special case that has a lot of market power and brand premium.
Retail stores take on massive working capital and inventory costs. Of course their 'cut' is going to be higher, and it will be the same in every other retail chain because of the similar underlying economics.
If 'digital app stores' were commoditized, then the 30% would be more like 3% due to the nature of competition.
And that’s why if your business is based on selling a commodity like Android phones and PCs, you’re stuck selling low margin products where you can compete on price.
That also explains why it’s impossible to make real money selling either Android phones or Windows computers.
"it’s impossible to make real money selling either Android phones or Windows computers"
No. 99% (well not quite, but most) of the economy works this way. It's almost an entirely thin margin business world. Very, very few companies are making sweet margins unless there is some sneaky reason i.e. political patronage, niche markets, etc. etc.. Drugs and Healthcare work on high margins depending on how you look at it. But agriculture, natural resources, almost everything manufactured, entertainment, restaurants, transportation, energy ... hosting (!) most things are low margin businesses.
If I look at my largest purchases, it's not about the cost it took to make it.
Homes - homes sell based on location, school zoning, demographic make up (sad but true), etc. and new home builders can often sell at a premium based on services and customization
Cars - sell based on brand more than costs
Furniture -- One word - Ikea
Exercise equipment - Peleton vs NordicTrack
Even upscale restaurants have higher margins than lower scale ones.
Aside from real-estate (an asset, not a product or consumable), about everything you mentioned is hyper-competitive and low-margin.
'Brand' does not guarantee margin, in most cases, it simply provides a means to exist.
Peleton might make a hefty gross margin on their bikes, but they're also probably losing money due to huge marketing, R&D and operating costs, and they may never make a dime.
IKEA makes a solid profit, but only because they have a massive business at scale, at which point those thin margins add up to something big. Same thing for Walmart, Amazon, and any large Grocery store chain.
Those are all vicious businesses.
High operating costs, huge working capital requirements. It's ugly and cut-throat.
I'm making a hardware product right now, even if we're successful, our net margin per unit will be a tiny fraction of the MSRP. Of MSRP about 60% goes to retailer, about 25% cost to manufacture, about 5% marketing on the unit level, and then we have 10% to pay all our fixed and regular operating costs, brand marketing, R&D etc. and then taxes.
Doesn't Valve take 30% from games on Steam? But they're complaining Apple taking 30% is too much?
I also don't really think the Apple/Google fee is that unreasonable. Considering the resources, tools, marketplaces, tutorials, payment processing, all the other All dev stuff they provide in general. Yes if your app goes big, they make a lot of money. But for every big app there's something like 9 that fail completely (it's murky due to how many apps aren't intended to profit in the first place, and are just made to attract customers to a brand).
I don't know the numbers though. Maybe they could charge lots less. But just from my single viewpoint, it doesn't "feel" unreasonable.
I don't know if you have a "fair" argument here. Who needs that 30% more Apple or an independent app developer? Though the same could be said for Valve, at least it's the purpose of Valve where apple sells computing devices not software as their core enterprise.
But Apple's customer base is more valuable, which is why people still publish there despite the cost. Apple and Google aren't selling infrastructure, they're selling an audience.
That's fine, it makes sense to me that you would develop for Apple before Android because those customers are more affluent and willing to spend on software.
However I question whether the App Store is connecting you to those customers in any meaningful way when there is so much competition in there. Sure if you are lucky enough to get to the front page then you can do OK but most don't.
Apple also has a large and growing editorial staff writing articles and highlights for their App Store; it's virtually becoming a house magazine. So being in their store potentially offers exposure and marketing for free that's immensely valuable. (Whether it's 30% valuable is debatable, of course. Personally I think they should drop it from 15%/30% to 10%/20%, but "Apple: always more expensive than you think they should be" has worked for them for a long time.)
Valve takes 30% of direct sales through steam but allows developers to generate and sell separately steam keys where they get a 0% cut, as I understand it. For instance when you buy a game on humble bundle and get a steam key for it, valve makes nothing off that transaction.
Unless Apple and google start allowing sales outside their stores I don’t think steam is comparable.
Google Play and the Apple App Store are completely different beasts. Unless you jailbreak your iOS device, there is no way to install apps outside the App Store. On Android, you can install entirely separate stores, like the Amazon one, and several OSS-focused stores.
That’s not completely true, as I understand it. You can (or could a couple of years ago) get an ‘enterprise’ developer account that allows you to sign and provision apps to be sideloaded via a web link. Though iirc it’s more hassle for the end user as they have to explicitly allow it on their device.
DINKDINK’s reply above is more relevant. If you try using an enterprise cert to allow general public users to install your app you’ll quickly lose your enterprise cert. The enterprise cert is only to be used for internal company apps.
This is accurate but they've started getting antsy about free steam keys. I think it's due to pay-what-you-want bundles but they haven't really given any official statements, it's just second-hand from various developers. I suspect the policy on free keys may change now that literally anyone can toss a game up on the store and we've started seeing people maliciously manipulate the system (games that mine bitcoins and have in-app purchases designed to defraud users). They already made changes to filter out reviews from people who got game keys "for free" because of that sort of manipulation.
I suspect they'll either put a limit on # of free keys or start charging per key, something like 5% of your listed retail price.
There's a bigger difference: Steam competes on "open" platforms (i.e. the major OSes), where "open" means anyone could launch a competing service (and I fully expect another one to challenge Steam in the near future considering the way Steam is heading).
No one can launch a competing app service on iOS. Apparently you can on Android, but I'm not sure why no one succeeded yet. Maybe the same reason as no one succeeded yet replacing Steam either, you need some kind of critical mass and that takes time to build.
Keep in mind that the price they charge doesn't really have anything to do with the actual infrastructure despite the costs. They're not selling infrastructure, they're selling access to an audience no different than really any other publisher.
Valve has several big competitors in the PC market. Several hugely successful games are not available on Steam.
I'm not sure it's possible to create a hugely successful iPhone app that isn't on the App Store. Apple has a monopoly and is using it to squeeze excessive fees from developers.
Using a monopoly to squeeze excessive fees that happen to be exactly the same as the fees for a competitive market? There seems to be a logic breakdown there.
A business making an app has one choice for delivering that app to iPhone users. The iPhone owners could choose to switch to Android, but that's not a choice the business can make for the consumer.
The business could choose to launch on Android only, and hope that convinces consumers to switch, but that's about it for options.
There's no logic breakdown at all: publishers can get better terms by going with an competitor to Steam, such as GMG, GoG, Origin, Microsoft Store, or just release the app on their own website/platform.
It's functionally impossible to release an app on iOS without paying Apple.
Compared to the 0% of self-publishing, Apple's fees are excessive.
Sure, they can get better terms going through a competitor but then they don't get any of the value or services that Steam offers. They're paying a percentage to make use of all the benefits you get through Steam both as a company and for the end-users.
Apple's fees aren't excessive because they offer their services and provide their value to every app published through their store. Yes, they could offer a way to publish the app without those features and not charge the fee but that would further complicate the experience for users. I mean, technically, companies are absolutely allowed to host apps for users to side load themselves. It's just that no one wants to do that because it's not worth it when the costs Apple are taking are actually reasonable.
> Using a monopoly to squeeze excessive fees that happen to be exactly the same as the fees for a competitive market? There seems to be a logic breakdown there.
Valve gets 30% of apps distributed using Steam. In other words, only companies that value Steam at the 30% premium will use it -- and many of them don't. Meanwhile Steam has to be responsive to customers because it has competition, so it's forced to be a better product than monopoly app stores.
It's like saying that $25 is "the market price" for eight ounces of tuna fish because there are restaurants that charge that price and some people patronize them, so a monopoly that charges $50/pound in all cases is not charging unreasonable prices.
You can install new apps onto android from other stores like amazon or download straight from the web. Fortnite just did the latter by avoiding the play store and selling their app direct from their website.
For IOS though, fortnite launched it in the IOS store because there is no real practical way to get users to install their app outside of Apples app store.
Apple has a “monopoly” on their own products, not smartphones or apps, or anything else. It’s like complaining that Ford has a monopoly on cars made by Ford. There are other phones, other ecosystems, other cars. A monopoly isn’t “I want an Apple product on my own terms, and if I can’t get that, it’s a monopoly.” This trend of claiming Apple is a monopoly or Facebook is because you don’t like the alternatives is puerile and incorrect. You have a right to competition, not the premium product. You have a right to the marketplace of for example, cars, not a right to a Mercedes.
I’m getting very tired of the phrase “de facto” bandied about in front of monopoly as a way to use the latter word in a way that has no legal or technical merit. Words have meanings. Apple has a walled garden which competes with similar products, it’s just that Apple’s is better in many ways. They have a valuable audience, they don’t suffe from the security issues of their competitors, and that may make you want to use them. So use them, or don’t, and accept the trade-offs.
Don’t like Apple? Try android, their competition in the same space.
The monopoly they have isn't phones, it's iOS app distribution. It's a different market -- and the market isn't combined with apps for other systems because they have disjoint sets of customers. You can't use Android apps when you don't have an Android device.
Right, and WalMart has a “monopoly” on WalMarts, but that’s not actually a monopoly. If they had a monopoly on supermarket, that would be a legal issue. Apps is the space for competition, and Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on apps, or phones. In fact you can almost always get the same apps on multiple platforms.
People just want something they can’t have, so they play word games to make themselves sound righteous rather than selfish or petulant. No amount of talking around the issue or downvotes changes it, and it’s why an AG will laugh in your face if you claim Apple is violating antitrust regulations with their system.
> Right, and WalMart has a “monopoly” on WalMarts, but that’s not actually a monopoly. If they had a monopoly on supermarket, that would be a legal issue.
Which is likewise why Apple doesn't have a monopoly on phones.
> Apps is the space for competition, and Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on apps, or phones. In fact you can almost always get the same apps on multiple platforms.
The market isn't the app market itself, it's not that there aren't a hundred flashlight apps, it's the distribution market. All the flashlight apps have to come through Apple.
It's as if Walmart is the only retailer in California. That there are arbitrarily many manufacturers or that other retailers exist in Florida doesn't mean they don't have a retail monopoly in California.
And the fact is you can't get an app for your iPhone from the Play Store. They aren't the same market because they can't be substituted for each other.
> This is why I think we need a new way of identifying market abuse because you can make anyone a/not a monopoly based on what definition you use.
Which is why it matters if there are close substitutes or not.
> IOS device software distribution -> apple has a monopoly
There are no good substitutes for this. There is no viable alternative for distributing apps to the people with iOS devices. Distributing apps to people with Android devices isn't a substitute because they're different people, in the same way that distribution in the Northeast is not a substitute for distribution in the Southwest.
> High end phones -> apple probably has a monopoly
There are high end Android phones that are probably adequate substitutes. But if there weren't (or you think they aren't adequate substitutes) then sure.
> Total revenue of phones sold -> apple probably has a monopoly
The market you've specified is "phones" which is obviously not something Apple has a monopoly on. Whole Foods doesn't have a monopoly on food just because they have high margins. There are tons of non-Apple phones if all you need to satisfy to be part of the market is to be a phone.
It may even be a weak market definition because it's too broad -- a feature phone isn't a very good substitute for an iPhone. A better market definition might be smartphones, but even then they still don't have a monopoly. It's not about revenue or margins, it's a question of whether the consumer has a reasonable alternative supplier of something sufficiently equivalent.
> Number of phones (in use?) by OS -> android has a monopoly
The market in that case is would be "phone OS" but then Android has the obvious competition from iOS. Also, Android isn't a company, it's a product. It's nearly impossible for a piece of open source software to have "a monopoly" when literally everyone is allowed to supply it and anyone can do so at trivial cost. All the Android phone manufacturers are each independent suppliers of it.
> Number of computers by OS -> nobody has a monopoly
The market in that case is "computer OS" which is a poor market definition because desktop and phone operating systems are poor substitutes for each other.
I agree that there are substitutes for everything except the IOS distribution one. I also agree that most of these metrics are not true monopolies. However, I'm using the term "monopoly" in the way the EU sees it when enacting antitrust fines to curtail this type of behavior because what they basically use is >50% in some arbitrarily chosen metric (percent of of smartphones running an OS used for the EUs recent 5 billion dollar android fine on google) as that is what the EU is currently using to fine companies into "behaving" despite IOS being a much more abusive platform IMO.
This is why I think we need a new way of identifying market abuse.
The problem with what the EU is doing is that they aren't interested in applying a rigorous standard. It's perfectly possible to define markets or abuse in various ways, but if all they're really doing is to backfill reasoning to justify enormous fines on American businesses there is no point in arguing about what is in practice a rationalization, and the response if they continue to use such ambiguous rules probably ought to be something like lobbying the US government to negotiate a truce (or retaliate in kind against EU businesses).
> The problem with what the EU is doing is that they aren't interested in applying a rigorous standard.
Yeah, this is what I and a lot of other people have a problem with these EU antitrust laws and even GDPR . In the google case, they literally had the android play clauses set from day 1 when they had 0% market share and instead of telling google that they could no longer bundle chrome/search to the play store now that they reached 50% market share in mobile OS (their magic antitrust metric), they waited 7 years and then threw a ridiculous fine at them. If the laws were clear, this wouldn't be a problem.
Agreed. Instead of rectifying this via monopoly abuse laws, there should be regulations applicable to all hardware providers for allowing alternative software distribution mechanisms.
You want to make it illegal for someone to make a piece of hardware that can only run binaries signed by the manufacturer?
I can’t understand this at all. If I go through the trouble to create a product and I want to control the user experience for that product, that’s my right and privilege. The market will decide if they want to purchase my product or not.
Consumers have spoken, and spoken extremely loudly, that they like Apple’s approach. Why would you want to deny the right for this product to exist?
It’s an amazing product, and what Apple has accomplished with their App Store is nothing short of incredible. I love their approach and I think they are 100% entitled to charge what they want on their own marketplace.
Whether this is your right and privilege is determined by laws and regulations. At the moment, it is. At the same time, there are clearly different opinions as demonstrated by this thread, and your 100% agreement may or may not reflect how society overall feels about this issue or whether it's a good idea.
Neither does my opinion, of course. And either way, the fact that people like the Apple user experience doesn't mean they like or are even informed about the benefits and drawbacks of the iOS App Store model. They may have spoken for that model, or they may hate that model but still buy iPhones because they communicate with the rest of their Apple devices, or because the hardware is innovative and superior, or because they don't want to be tracked by a much scarier surveillance machinery. Without separating the parts and letting each compete on its own, we'll never know what about it is something consumers want and what about it they'd rather pass on.
I'm not calling for an end to products like Apple's. I think it's great that people have access to devices that follow clear policies and security practices which are guaranteed by a trustworthy party.
I do think, though, that this decision should be made by the user in the end. The opportunity to set defaults is already an extremely strong lever for the first-party vendor, and people such as yourself who like it as is have no reason to change anything about it.
I also think that competition can and should happen on different levels, and that control of e.g. hardware or system APIs should not automatically translate to exclusive control over the third-party ecosystem, unless the user explicitly wants this. One possible approach to regulating this, without preventing actual highly integrated products, could be to require the vendor to allow third-party app stores if the product ships with an app store itself. If the iOS experience is actually better with iOS App Store compared to a third-party app store with e.g. lower fees, better search and less stringent controls, why not let them battle it out and let the consumer decide?
It's important to recognize that Apple has created world-class products. It's also important to recognize that the existing duopoly is an extremely strong detractor against competition. It's like the government inviting bids for a giant construction project - if they require the bidders to do everything and the kitchen sink, then only the largest consortiums will be able to apply, whereas if the project is split into several reasonably-sized parts then smaller companies can compete as well and the end result will be cheaper, better executed and more accountable. I think we all agree that competition is a good thing, the question is how large to draw the boundary of what constitutes an integrated product and what should be considered out of scope, to compete in a different market. I think we owe it to society and to future businesses to ensure that a superior product still has a chance of succeeding in the marketplace.
> You want to make it illegal for someone to make a piece of hardware that can only run binaries signed by the manufacturer?
I'm not sure why this is supposed to be controversial. It's not a prohibition on checking signatures, it's just a requirement to give the user the option of doing something else.
Once you sell something it's not yours anymore. Companies shouldn't be allowed to stick up everyone in an ancillary market just because they have more market power.
> I can’t understand this at all. If I go through the trouble to create a product and I want to control the user experience for that product, that’s my right and privilege. The market will decide if they want to purchase my product or not.
That's assuming that markets are perfect. What you're saying would be true if there were two versions of the iPhone, one that could only run signed apps and one that was exactly the same but can also run unsigned apps and the customer chose the first one. But that isn't the case, and because that isn't the case you end up forcing someone who wants an iPhone for a reason other than mandatory signing to accept mandatory signing (and the consequent app store monopoly) even though they don't want it. That isn't the market deciding, it's the manufacturer deciding for the market.
> Consumers have spoken, and spoken extremely loudly, that they like Apple’s approach.
This is not really supported by the evidence. The large majority of phone customers chose Android and even among iPhone customers there are multiple other reasons (hardware, UI, status signaling) to choose an iPhone even if you don't want or don't care about app gatekeeping.
The fact that customers don't want it is the whole issue. The first time most users are given a choice between installing an app they want that isn't approved or not having the app, they're going to install it. And given a choice between a distribution method that restricts apps and then charges 30% more and one that doesn't and has lower prices, they're going to pick the lower prices. Otherwise Apple wouldn't have to lock all the doors and windows from the outside -- you could just choose to never install anything outside Apple's store, even if you had the option to do otherwise.
>> Consumers have spoken, and spoken extremely loudly, that they like Apple’s approach.
> This is not really supported by the evidence...
This isn’t about Apple vs Android or market share. The success of iOS speaks for itself, and in particular the success of the App Store speaks for itself. It is self-evident from the billions of dollars that apps have earned (is it tens of billions now?) that the model is successful and widely used both by developers and consumers. Apple users are much more prolific spenders on the Apple App Store than users of the Android market as well, the majority of that money going directly to developers. This is partly demographics, but also partly the security, reliability, and trust provided by the walled garden.
> And given a choice between a distribution method that restricts apps and then charges 30% more and one that doesn't and has lower prices
As long as apps that are not sold through the Apple Store do not use any Apple APIs to operate, that would be fair.
But if you want to use the massive infrastructure that Apple has built [1] then I think you have to play by Apple’s rules.
The iPhone is a device which you own, yes, but it is also a massive collection of services which Apple spends 10s of billions of dollars developing and supporting in order to deliver the overall experience.
As an app developer, the APIs, services, documentation, training, support, and marketing combine to justify the 30%. The “App Store” application itself, and all the search, discovery, reviews, auto-updates, billing, services, and support is just one piece of the massive infra that Apple provides to all the apps running on its platform.
> The success of iOS speaks for itself, and in particular the success of the App Store speaks for itself. It is self-evident from the billions of dollars that apps have earned (is it tens of billions now?) that the model is successful and widely used both by developers and consumers.
Requiring everyone to use something and then claiming that everyone wants to use it because everyone uses it is a bit circular, isn't it?
> This is partly demographics, but also partly the security, reliability, and trust provided by the walled garden.
But why do you need the walls instead of just a sign that says "now leaving Apple's garden"? If being in Apple's store means you're trusted and make more money then go be in Apple's store. That still doesn't explain why it should be prohibited for a user to install an app outside of it. And then we would find out which factors actually make the difference, instead of claiming it's this and then taking an action inconsistent with it -- if nobody wanted to install apps outside the store then there would be no reason to prohibit it because no one would be trying to do it.
> As long as apps that are not sold through the Apple Store do not use any Apple APIs to operate, that would be fair.
They don't even allow that. If they did you would soon have alternate APIs from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, Mozilla or others. But Apple encouraging that would be like Microsoft encouraging use of Sun Java. Apple gets more from people using their API than the people get from using it instead of an alternative.
No, Walmart owns those stores. Phones, on the other hand, are owned by the people who purchase them. And those people who own the phones have the full right to do whatever they want with them.
You can do whatever you want with your iPhone too, including rooting it, or throwing out of a moving car. Apple can then choose to support it, or not. In the same way that you can buy a given make and model of car and mod it into a dragster, or a tractor if you want to. Apple sells iPhones, and own their store which you can choose to access from your iPhone, or not if you prefer. In addition you can get all of the benefits of “phone” and “app” from another platform if you prefer.
I can buy a Mercedes, and if I want to I can pay a Merc dealership $1400 parts and labor for an ignition coil when the similar part andlabor for a Toyota would be $200. I can also go to a non-Merc shop and seek repairs (and take some risks) for less money. What I can’t do is buy a Mercedes, then turn around and demand that Mercedes sell their parts at Toyota rates and claim that Mercedes has a monopoly on Mercedes.
I mean I could, but I’d rightly be an object of scorn and ridicule. To go back to the WalMart analogy, they have their own store brands as well, and they’re only sold in WalMarts. Why not force them to sell from other outlets, since they’re a monopoly in your fantastical estimation? It’s legal and frankly ethical to restrict sales that way, and a world of other options exist; it’s not WalMart mayo, or no mayo ever again.
By contrast for a real illegal monopoly see Standard Oil or AT&T. If I wanted to use the phone lines, I could pay whatever they wanted or train carrier pigeons. My access to “phone” was entirely a function of whether I was willing to play their game. It wasn’t a matter of having different choices of providers and platforms and marketplaces, it was have a phone with AT&T, or don’t have a phone.
> You can do whatever you want with your iPhone too, including rooting it
Not according to Apple.
> Why not force them to sell from other outlets, since they’re a monopoly in your fantastical estimation?
They're not a monopoly because the other stores already have products that are adequate substitutes. People can buy a different brand of laundry detergent from a different store without having to replace their washing machine.
> If I wanted to use the phone lines, I could pay whatever they wanted or train carrier pigeons.
Not true -- if you wanted to use phone line all you would have to do is go to Canada where they have non-AT&T phone lines and use them there.
Obviously it isn't very practical to leave the country every time you want to make a phone call, but how is that any different than needing to buy a new phone every time you want to buy an app?
Apple does have a monopoly on their own products. No need for scare quotes. They also have a monopoly on iOS app distribution. One of those bothers more market participants than the other, and for the same reasons monopolies can (but don't always) cause trouble for the markets in which they exist.
As per usual, competition is a good answer. Competition in making iPhones is nonsensical. Competition in distributing and selling iOS apps isn't, and would be good for the market. Or at least it might be good for the market. That's the whole premise of this discussion, and for most discussions about monopolistic tendencies.
The modern marvel that are credit cards or debit cards run at low single digit percentages. And they are getting a ton of margin out of those; so much that in the EU, they capped fees at 0.3%.
And those transaction fees actually pay for something, like customer protection, SLAs (not a shitty status site) and no, the credit card company doesn't add unskippable ads on top of the checkout process or advertise a scam clone version of what you are trying to buy to you.
You tell me if the app store fees provide 100x as much.
In your analogy, the App Store is the store, not the credit card terminal. As somebody who sells on Amazon, I can tell you that they take more than 30% of what the customer pays.
The problem is it's clearly a monopoly (or duopoly). How did they settle on 30%? Why did Apple and Google come to the same 30% number - is that a coincidence? They could easily provide the same service for less than 1/3 of the cost, but the percent never budges because it doesn't have to. There's zero competitive pressure. In fact they could move it up to 60% if they want to with nothing stopping them. Some people have managed to build a business on these app stores but in my opinion they should only be leveraged as part of an existing independent business, otherwise you're building a business on quicksand.
Right. If this were a competitive market, they'd both be constantly refining their cut to find the optimal value. In practice the 30% was plucked out of the air and has never been changed.
Does Steam take a cut for in game purchases? I think the major issue here is with companies having app stores inside app store. All the companies mentioned i.e Amazon, Steam seem to allow in-app purchases at a scale quite different than normal apps. It does seem weird that if I am purchasing an item through Steam's app store, Steam has to pay Apple.
I mean it would be like Amazon paying Apple a cut, if I buy a TV from amazon. AFAIK, it is only for digital goods that Apple charges, but I am not sure how the demarcation works.
On the flip side, if Apple/Google allow any app to use in-app purchases without a commission, then all apps will use in-app purchases for everything.
Yes. That's why they cut out remote control purchasing feature from their iOS app, to avoid hypocrisy charges and to avoid the sticky situation where a steam app tried the same (letting you make microtransaction purchases by remoting in to your phone or something).
Same as why Epic dropped their marketplace cut down from 30% something like one week before their "30% is unfair" press campaign which in turn was used to take the spotlight off criticism of Fortnite's release on Android as a timed exclusive with Samsung's new flagship.
> Doesn't Valve take 30% from games on Steam? But they're complaining Apple taking 30% is too much?
They're complaining Apple is taking too much without alternative. If the app store provided 30% worth of value, it would be voluntarily chosen like Steam is. Why derail with such a ridiculous equivalence?
Steam does not sell me a locked down hardware platform preventing me from buying the software directly from the publisher. Nor does Steam force me to buy DLC through Steam, I am free to buy the DLC directly from the publisher. Steam gets a cut of what I buy from Steam and I am not locked into buying from Steam in order to make my PC useful.
Apple sells me a locked down hardware platform that requires me to go through them for all software purchases and all data purchases made with that software.
> But just from my single viewpoint, it doesn't "feel" unreasonable.
It seems unreasonable to me that Apple should get a cut of my Amazon Video purchases. Apple adds no value there; they just get in the way and try to take a cut. I already have a relationship with Amazon and when I download a video from Amazon, it costs Apple nothing.
The entire thing where I have to make a purchase through the Amazon website rather than the Amazon or Amazon Video app and then download it with Amazon Video app is just stupid.
Other than inventing the modern phone, writing the operating system and developer tools, running the store, manufacturing the phones people are consuming Amazon's product on and convincing people to buy them...you can argue about what's "fair," but Apple's certainly adding value.
That's fine but you're not really the intended market for the App Stores. App Stores are for the people that click "Yes" to everything and end up with Internet Explorer as a strip of their screen because they have 42 toolbars installed. Those people undoubtedly like app stores precisely for being the only way to get software on their machines.
I dunno - I much prefer the Microsoft app store on Windows for simple applications that I don't need to customise much. It's quicker than finding the right exe and keeping it up to date myself.
Why? Is it wrong to sell a phone at low cost and charge more for apps? Video game consoles sometimes are sold at a loss in order to make money from games.
It's similar to Fortnite's model: sell the game at a low cost (free actually), and then make money from inessential addons (skins).
If that were the case, no, nothing wrong... But apple is making a huge markup on their $1200 phones. They aren't making up a loss with their app store. They're just piling on the cash.
Would it be wrong of apple to make the app store fee 5% and then increase the phone price whatever percent is necessary to make up that loss? Would that be considered piling on the cash?
At least then, buyers get a more realistic view of total cost of ownership up front, rather than hiding the rest of the profits in the pricing of other people's apps.
It's fine for a company to sell hardware/os at a loss and recoup the costs with apps, if they predict that they'll make more money that way. However, it's not reasonable for them to, say, refuse me service on the os because all I bought was a hardware+os, not any apps. Nor is it reasonable for them to make me, an app-maker, bear the brunt of the os, since I have nothing to do with the os, just the app store.
If I buy a smart fridge, even though it has a computer in it, I don't expect to be able to install arbitrary software on it in a supported manner. Apple doesn't advertise as a computing platform for everything, they advertise as having a whitelist of apps, and that's what they provide. I don't want a phone with a whitelist, so I don't buy iOS phones. But some people do want that type of product, and do buy them.
You do have something to do with the os. Your app is running on the os.
They invented the app ecosystem, which is far more important than just inventing a phone. Without Apple, the application market would still be controlled by Sprint and AT&T and Verizon.
Not defending Apple or attacking it, just pointing out the facts.
> And how is Apple's walled app store any better than the alternative of at&t controlled app store?
I don't know if you've used an iPhone, but do you really think AT&T's walled garden would have anything approaching the quality of the best apps on the App Store?
He or she is probably just young. No one who was there would ask a question like that, even rhetorically.
Sadly, people have forgotten how much life sucked for mobile developers before the iPhone. Apple's contribution is reflected in various peoples' prejudices and agendas, but not in history books. Only Nixon could go to China, and only Jobs could have stared down AT&T from a position of weakness.
I'm not an Apple partisan, and I'm definitely not going to defend the concept of locking a general-purpose computing platform away from its own users, but I'll always give him credit for that.
Just because they've already been compensated to some degree doesn't mean they've been fully compensated. Video game consoles are sometimes sold at a loss in order to make money on games.
Comparing distribution of physical goods is a poor analogy as the variable costs are high, and low or zero for App Store developers. We know from tariffs that a 30% fee on mining or manufacturing increases costs and reduces trade, but despite Apple’s 30%, the cost of an app has been driven down. This suggests that a high revenue share of a software sale is viable in a way that a high revenue share of a truck load is not.
Sorry, are you saying you’d like App Store software taxed enough that sales are low and it’s not viable for Apple to make money, forcing them to allow an unregulated open market if they want a meaningful number of apps on their phones? It’s an interesting idea, but I think the opportunity cost early on would have been that entire software market. And the opportunity cost now would be killing a large percentage of businesses that sell software to that market that can’t afford to handle distribution themselves. This quickly gets into the debate about whether it’s better to have large and many small companies or no large and few small companies.
> Sorry, are you saying you’d like App Store software taxed enough that sales are low and it’s not viable for Apple to make money, forcing them to allow an unregulated open market if they want a meaningful number of apps on their phones?
As trucks account for a high (90%ish) amount of road wear, they actually probably should pay a high fee. Accurate costs might also make the rail freight industry more cost competitive, leading to better market diversity.
As I understand it, if you already have a subscription for Amazon Video through the web, then download the Amazon Video app and login to your existing account, Apple doesn't get anything.
Which is why the article emphasized Netflix trying to get customers to sign up through their web site, and not the app.
You can wishlist and download samples from the app on iOS, but any purchases have to be done from the website. On android, you can buy/download full books directly from the app.
One can even download free samples of the books which makes it very convenient to pay on kindle or the website later. But it is sad that Apple decided that apps cannot even mention that purchase has to be done at the website.
Correct. Apple gets a cut if a customer subscribes through the in-app one-click subscription, which is extremely convenient for any iPhone user (and thus app publishers) because it’s a single click rather than having to insert credit cards, 3D secure and whatnot. In this case the cut is 30% on the first year and 10% afterwards. If the user subscribes through the website, Apple gets nothing. I find this fair.
What is more unfair is that Apple forbids apps to open/link websites where subscriptions can be done to “workaround” the iTunes subscription. If you take Spotify for instance and login as free user, there are absolutely zero mentions that you can upgrade to premium, because they decided to lose those potential customers and rather let them know through other channels of their purchasing options (eg: emails).
On the other hand, this creates a very safe and simple environment for iPhone users. Absolutely NO app asks for a credit card, ever. You either pay one-click safely through iTunes, or nothing. There is no phishing, no mismanaged credit card handling, no credit cards “stolen by hackers from the app I installed into my iPhone”. I’m not saying this fully justifies the above unfair rule, but it’s at least a partial positive side effect.
This is 100% what I'm saying. I think that it does fully justify the rule that people are saying is "unfair". I have yet to hear a good argument that doesn't amount to something totally incorrect like "Apple doesn't provide any value and is just a middleman" or just an opinion like "Apple shouldn't take part of the purchase just because they own the platform" because while it may be a valid opinion, it looks at the situation from only the perspective of the 2 companies in question (Apple and whoever) and not the end-user.
What is more unfair is that Apple forbids apps to open/link websites where subscriptions can be done to “workaround” the iTunes subscription.
Slight anecdote, because of that policy, Amazon doesn't support links to Amazon from Kindle Books. Which is fine 99.999% of the time. Until you buy a book about AWS and you can't click on any of the links to documentation on Amazon's websites....
I would also note that being able to painlessly cancel a subscription at any time is a big incentive for users to buy subscriptions through the iOS App Store.
Having recently jumped through the series of hoops necessary to cancel an NYTimes subscription, I am strongly biased towards App Store and Amazon-Prime-based subscriptions, even though they are arguably unfair to the providers.
You are correct in that if I subscribe through Apple, that Apple gets a cut, and if I subscribe via the web they do not get a cut. This makes sense, since Apple is providing a subscription service. I don't have any problem with this model. It's convenient and I've used it in the past.
However, Apple also wants a cut if I were to purchase a movie through the Amazon Video app. Amazon has disallowed such purchases for this reason. Instead, I have to go back to the web, make the purchase, and then I can view it with the app.
Some may argue that this is a fair price for having your app hosted on the app store. However, since Apple prevents any other means of me getting apps on my phone, I find it unfair rent-seeking.
Worse, Apple very clearly wants subscriptions to work just like in-app purchases.
They add value by creating a product that has massive scale, reach, usability and quality. They add value by having branded stores that fix the device for you. They add value by developing stable software that gets updated regularly. If you don’t like the product, don’t buy one, it’s that simple. Go buy a cheap Chinese knockoff that doesn’t have developer support for millions of apps, has lousy quality control, if it breaks you’re shit out of luck. It costs 1/10 the price of an iphone, but the experience is lousy. I value my iphone because it adds more value to my life than it costs to buy, and the company that makes it is entitled to charge whatever they want for it. Apple makes money because they add value and I see no reason why a company that adds value to the marketplace should not turn a profit.
> They add value by creating a product that has massive scale, reach, usability and quality. They add value by having branded stores that fix the device for you. They add value by developing stable software that gets updated regularly.
Your rant is misplaced and you've missed the point entirely. I never said Apple adds no value. I think they add quite a bit of value, which is why I've bought a number of their products. I am talking about a specific case for which Apple thinks it is due 30%.
Apple does not add value by inserting itself into a transaction I am trying to conduct with Amazon. I've already paid for all the value. First to Apple for the device, and then to Amazon for the data. Am I or Amazon supposed to pay Apple for my use of the device as well? And if so... where is the value added?
It’s really hard to feel sorry for Amazon, or you, given your whine is you have to go to a web browser to complete your transaction.
In truth, The App Store is far more than a mere payment processor, though it might be best in the world at that. The costs of hosting, distributing and updating two million apps across hundreds of localized stores, and also vetting every release and update for those millions of apps, is immense.
All their work makes the App Store easy and safe to use anywhere in the world and that helps developers sell more apps.
I would bet that Apple would probably rather you not have a relationship with Amazon Video at all, getting your TV and Movies from iTunes instead.
But Apple doesn't have a majority of market share (by number of devices), so, in my opinion, antitrust regulators have completely discounted their behavior.
On the other hand, the experience of using Apple Pay is miles beyond Google Checkout/Wallet/Pay/Android Pay/whatever marketing's new name-of-the-week-is, and only allowing One Blessed Way of taking payment on Apple devices is a big component of that. Having one consistent flow that I can execute in three seconds from muscle memory really does make buying-from-random-apps-and-retailers experience much nicer and more predictable than it is on the web and on other mobile platforms.
Apple Pay and app store/itunes payments are completely separate. I had apple pay set-up for awhile and when I went to purchase an app, itunes wouldn't accept apple pay and I had to re-enter all my CC information into itunes.
Steam is also adding a lot of value for that rev-share. A social network...kickstart-esque backing of projects...cloud saves...great search and discoverability. There is a reason why developers choose Steam even though they operate on platforms that don't require it.
In the absence of any alternative methods of developers getting their apps into users hands, it is difficult to say whether "search, promotion, distribution, and analytics" offered by Apple are really valued at what Apple is charging for them. It is also difficult to separate these things from things Apple is doing for its own sake, since they increase sales which benefits Apple directly.
I strongly suspect that, given enough time to compensate for the existing momentum of the App Store, if an alternative App Store was an option, Apple would either improve its offerings, lower what it charges, or see a mass migration of publishers away from the App Store.
You're completely ignoring the hit to both the brand and experience that something like that would cause. There's a big reason why iOS users tend to spend more money on the platform than Android users do on the Google platform and a huge part of that is the trust built by Apple with their users.
You can go into the Google Play store (which most people would think was the "official" and "safe" method of getting apps) and still get malware and/or a virus on your Android phone. Now imagine that Google offered both an official Play store and an alternative open Play store. Which do you think the majority of users would use and have a positive opinion of?
You seem to be suggesting the only alternative to the App Store is a janky Apple-run Open App Store. All Apple has to do to offer an alternative is let people install Apps on their phones outside the App Store just like they can do on their Macs. People will still trust the App Store, but maybe a competitor comes along and maybe Netflix/Amazon etc use them or maybe they don’t.
I didn't suggest that at all. I suggested that it was a possible alternative simply because that's the only way something like that would be considered "official" still while allowing for any apps to be published.
There's no reason for Apple to offer that on their phones since it dilutes the customer experience. Anyone that would care about doing that can still do that via XCode by side-loading the apps.
Case in point - where's the competitor for the Mac App Store on macOS? There's not. Users have to do all the legwork themselves. That's literally no different than side-loading your own apps.
Wait What. Steam is a "competitor" to Mac App Store. Homebrew is a sort of competitor to app store. Heck any website which has more that 1 Mac OS "app" is a sort of an "app store ".
Stop being obtuse. People have to find the software they want first and then download the DMG from somewhere which usually involves ignoring a billion fake "DOWNLOAD NOW" buttons. The App Store is a trusted platform with literally one click find an app and one click to install.
What? First of all my main argument was that installing outside the App Store is much easier on MacOS than it is on iOS.
Second: many, many sites host their own DMG downloads, with zero fake download buttons. I don't think searching for an app's website on Google is significantly harder than searching for an app in the App Store (also I'm not sure typing in search terms is "one click", but whatever). I'll admit that using the App Store is slightly less work to install stuff, and somewhat more secure.
But from a user standpoint (I use a Mac with one or two App Store apps and dozens of DMG-installer-based apps) it's not a huge difference. And from a developer standpoint, that's not worth 30% of my revenue.
> All Apple has to do to offer an alternative is let people install Apps on their phones outside the App Store
This exists now and is free. I’m not saying it’s a good user experience (especially the one week limitation), but it’s definitely possible and legit / legal / free.
Search: yes, but to counter that: the App Store shows ads of your competitors ABOVE your own app, even if someone searches for your app by name.
Promotion: only the ones that seem to be successful anyways. Mostly no niche apps
Distribution: yes
Analytics: Not everybody needs this and they're pretty basic, too.
They also introduce hurdles: Rating system (can be easily abused), or in the case of the App Store: review process (sometimes somewhat arbitrary), no insight into payments (you can't even issue a refund).
One service that is indeed quite useful: They handle all payment processing and country's tax. You just get a single payment wired to your bank account. Makes your own taxes a lot easier. This and distribution are probably the biggest benefit for most apps (especially niche apps), but does this justify a 30% cut?
That's not really a fair comparison since Apple has to curate the App Store and is 100% responsible for the service as well. It's not like you're buying an iPhone or iPad without knowing that all your apps come from the App Store and that's part of the value - unlike Android, you know exactly where the app is coming from, what it is and isn't allowed to do, and have an expectation that the app has been reasonably reviewed so it's not a danger to you or the device.
Steam is almost exactly the same way because it's not like you can take your Steam purchase and use it without Steam. Yes, you can buy DLC and other add-ons directly from the publisher if you wanted to but that's moreso because of how the publishers have created their products rather than how Steam works as a platform.
As for your Amazon example, Apple does absolutely add value there. They manage and keep track of all your purchases and payments so that there's a single, unified method for both paying and resolving issues. Additionally, since Apple functions as the payment processor, you're also paying for the security functionality. The only reason you have to make a purchase from the Amazon website is because Amazon wants to control the purchasing and doesn't want to pay Apple for their payment processing.
It's just a difference of whether you prefer the consistency of the experience that Apple prefers at the expense of other companies or whether you prefer to deal with several different experiences that could potentially open everything up for fraud and problems. People who aren't as tech savvy or who don't want to have to wade through a bunch of BS just to make a purchase may prefer Apple's method. Others may prefer digging through and doing all that in order to have a broader pool to choose from.
I think your first paragraph is a result of you viewing this from the perspective of someone knowledgeable about technology. The vast majority of people using Android phones get their apps exclusively from the Play Store and assume Android is exactly the same as iOS in that way.
Apple sells me a locked down hardware platform that requires me to go through them for all software purchases and all data purchases made with that software.
A. You can choose to buy an Android phone like 80%+ of the smart phone world.
B. You can buy content outside of the Apple store and use it within the app (Amazon, Udemy, Spotify, Google Play Music, every video streaming service, etc.)
It seems unreasonable to me that Apple should get a cut of my Amazon Video purchases.
They don't, in fact you can't buy Amazon content within the app.
Amazon does not offer you the option because the only way they could offer it is if they gave Apple their 30% cut. Same super annoying reason you cannot buy books in the kindle app.
People keep saying Apple adds no value but bringing millions of paying customers and a trusted storefront does in fact have lots of value for most apps. This is exactly the value Steam brings on PC. Being locked down or not is a red herring to the value argument, people sell on Steam because of simple math: the millions of additional paying customers outweighs the commission Valve demands.
Valve has competitors in the PC games storefront market. On iOS, there is (for all practical reasons) no other storefront. People would be stuck on the App Store even if they were to charge something ridiculous like 50%, because there's no where else to go.
> Valve has competitors in the PC games storefront market. On iOS, there is (for all practical reasons) no other storefront.
Predictably, this is where the goalposts have moved[1] but it's really orthogonal to whether there's value or not. Also as pointed out elsewhere, Steam is in a competitive market and charges the same commission. Also in Apple's favor is the well attested to value of the App Store vs Google Play and others in terms of raw revenue.
[1] 'Predictably' as in "Being locked down or not is a red herring to the value argument" in grandparent
I’m surprised there is no backlash from independent iOS developers. Not only do they have 30% taken away, they have the yearly $100 fee,they need expensive Apple products to make the app, apps have be priced low because consumers expect low priced amazing apps. Then you have to market the app to stand out.
Being locked down is the source of the value on many cases. Being locked down and curated means that when someone looks for an app they find that app, and not that app and a dozen lookalikes with similar names, half of which are outright malware. Being locked down and curated means that stuff just works and does so predictably, and will continue to work.
That’s the value add IMO, not the aluminum case, the Apple logo, or anything else. A locked garden isn’t perfect, but it’s better than an open sewer.
> Being locked down is the source of the value on many cases. ... Being locked down and curated means that stuff just works and does so predictably, and will continue to work.
The Apple App Store does not fill all those conditions. In fact, I can safely say it does not do some of things you say, including the part about stuff just working.
I've noticed this trend in the game industry. Any game company that is large enough will work on their own launcher (look at Blizzard, Epic Games, EA, etc.)
Don't Apple and Google take 30% of all in-app sales as well? It's like your phone and internet company saying, "Well, guess we're gonna take 30% of all business you do over the phone or internet" or your rental company demanding 30% of your income.
If every app I downloaded were several to several 10s of gigabytes of data, I might be more inclined to cut them some slack. 30% on a 5MB download is pretty tough to justify. The cost of storing and transferring that file is a rounding error.
What makes you think the 30% cut is to pay for the bandwidth of the file transfer?
The entire platform the app runs on was created by Apple. The hardware, the OS, the programming language, the SDKs.
Thousands of APIs used to build the apps, maybe a million pages of documentation on those APIs.
All the toolchain to develop, build, test, and deploy apps for purchase in hundreds of countries including customer profiles, billing, and support.
Billions of dollars of iCloud infrastructure for backend services to support everything from push notifications, data sync, backup, automatic updates, etc.
Then you get into the actual app store and you have all the work that went into the UX there for discovering, installing, buying and reviewing apps. In-app purchases and subscription services to support different business models. Family sharing, parental controls, parental approval requirements for kids’ phones.
I could go on for hours and probably still miss huge swaths of functionality that Apple invested millions of dollars into, just so that you could pull up chair and with a few lines of code start writing an app that can reach billions of devices.
Not to mention all the marketing and training and support Apple does to prime their customers to be big users of the App Store.
Yeah, and the bandwidth to download the app as well.
Personally I think 30% is a steal for what you get in return.
Oh, and I’ll just add one more thing; you can distribute your app for free and you pay Apple nothing (or nearly nothing) for the benefit of all their hard work and infrastructure and support.
> But for every big app there's something like 9 that fail completely
Actually the ratio is more like 1 to 500k. There are millions of apps in both stores, but I'd bet less than 1000 make significant income exclusively from the app stores.
I agree. There's a lot that people take for granted with these App Stores, especially with Apple's. The alternative is to pass this cost onto the consumer instead and I think that's a terrible idea.
Many major PC games publishers and developers have chosen either to not to use Steam or have reduced their support including EA, Epic, Microsoft (including Mojang), Riot, Activision Blizzard and Bethesda.
>Doesn't Valve take 30% from games on Steam? But they're complaining Apple taking 30% is too much?
Nobody is locked to valve on PC. Large game publishers have their own PC stores precisely to avoid getting ripped off by Valve. EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay, Blizzard/Activision has Battle.net. MS has the Microsoft Store. There are many little indie stores with their own handling of profits, like itch.io :
>itch.io costs nothing to use. You are free to create pages and upload your content without ever having to pay anything. Advertisements will never be placed on any of your pages.
>You get to decide how much you want to support itch.io by choosing what percentage of your sales should go towards our operational costs and continued development of the platform. We call that open revenue sharing.
Subscription MMORPGs also all have their own payment schemes and external launchers that bypass Valve's little greedy hands.
Being locked to a single app store on any platform is a mistake. PCs are great because we don't suffer this, for now. Until MS decides to make Windows S the default and lock people from freely switching to a normal version of Windows.
This may work for Amazon only because their own brand is also directly known to the user, and a lot of users would also be visitors of their website. But for a newcomer trying to sell digital goods via an app, good luck
They may have some sort of ‘free pass’ due to their size/influence. It’s eqsy to say that Amazon’s content is meant for Kindles too, and just happens to work for the iPhone.
But if you have an iOS only app? Good luck arguing your way out of the rule.
Release a free app that requires a user to log in. In order to access the content in the app, the user has to log into a web browser with that account and pay directly via the developer's website. Amazon Kindle and Netflix kind of do this. With Kindle, you have to buy the books with a separate app instead of a website, and Netflix has the option to buy inside the app as well as outside.
Apple has rules against circumventing their billing system. Netflix gets to do it because the service works if you don’t have any iOS devices.
I’m not sure someone like Fortnight could get away with bypassing it. If they did it would only be due to being a special case due to pull. No normal app could get away with it, you’d get pulled fast.
Well, see once an app becomes more important than its platform, the platform has reasons to worry.
Recent exodus from apple app store over in app purchases began with Tencent strongarming Apple to let them run their own in app payments under a threat of them quitting.
It doesn't require one to be a brilliant thinker to ask "if Tencent was allowed to, why can't I?"
I think this point can't be emphasized enough. I read somewhere that Apple wouldn't want to go back to those days when some applications were more important than their platform, and when they were at the mercy of Adobe or Microsoft to continue providing software for the Mac. If an app becomes bigger than the platform, the platform loses it's strong lock in, and becomes dependent on the application. Like WeChat has become a platform in itself, and in China basically is the de facto platform a phone must support to be usable.
Then there's the "developer tax" too - Apple squeezes money from the developers too for the "privilege" of even making an app (for public distribution) for the ios platform. And you need to buy a Mac too ...
You do get XCode for free though. There's a lot of development behind that software. I don't totally agree with the 30% fee, but someone has to pay for XCode development.
If the app is a singular product that only exists on mobile, then fine you bake the Apple/Google tax into your price.
for content subscription businesses that are multi-platform its a bit of an absurd situation. You can't really charge 50% more on mobile platforms. Depending on where your user randomly decides to sign up your revenue and lifetime value of that user is suddenly 2/3rds of what it otherwise would be, despite costs being the same.
There's some full-circle irony in Apple and Google complaining about taxes being too high and using ways to avoid them, then they get served with the same tactics by companies in their ecosystems. Without passing judgement, it's just one of those classical examples of "what goes around comes around".
This. This is why how Steam operates is 10x better than the mobile app stores. A 30% fee for getting your app in front of the users who might buy it is one thing. Steam isn't perfect, but they've set up their economic model where they are rewarded for doing this, which is good for both developers and users. This involves personal recommendations, maybe third party curation features, search etc.
If you have an ad-based model, there's less of a reason improve those other systems, since the store might be able to extract 75% of the value created if you get developers bidding against each other to buy visibility. But it sucks for everyone except the app store owner.
The iOS App Store design is pretty awesome actually. It got a total design revamp last year in iOS 11 [1], and it's coming to macOS Mojave in a couple of months, so to claim the design is stagnant is incorrect.
It's fluid, and has great use of typography, spacing and colors. I don't see how it is criticize the design of it, the design is the best part. The missing features (like demo versions not being possible) etc and bad policies are the issues, not the design.
An annoying thing with the new design is that the Today content only is saved for a week, past articles and selections gets lost (archiving the editorial content would actually be a smart website idea, if you disregard the copyright issues), ideally it should be indefinitely scrollable.
Edit: It's frustrating that people don't bother explaining what is wrong with the design of the App Store instead of just downvoting me.
I didn't (and won't) vote on your comment, however I think the down votes are due to the fact that you praised the App store while saying something negative about the Play store. Even HN is not without it's fanboys.
Have you actually found any new apps to download through Apple's new News style storefront? Just a cursory ping around my office has resulted in only 1 person installing an app through it.
It's quite frankly an obnoxious, Apple has to control everything, replacement for all of the other various startups who were creating marketing channels for developers to reach new users.
I'm sorry, but I could not disagree more. I've only used the store once, and it was just awful.
The search was crap, the recommended apps were crap, the way the data was presented is horrible, etc.
I didn't downvote you, but it seems obvious to me that their tools and design were not intended with UX in mind, but profits.
We have much more powerful CPU, In-Memory DB and SSD, Searching within a comparatively small dataset that is the App Store is a solved problem more than a decade ago and much more so now. Instead we got a appalling App Store search. It could simply mean one thing, Apple just doesn't care.
Why would they care, you don't have a choice.
BTW,why is Google having issues with its store in Europe and not Apple? At least you can install an alternative store on Android which is strictly better for the consumer.
I wouldn't have complain if it was from any other companies. But it is Apple, they need to be better. Why do they need to do it? Steve gave an answer long ago, "Because we give a Damn!"
Note: I only have experience with android, I don't know what state the ios store is in.
My gut feeling based on how search and navigation is structured in the play store (a few broad categories, no option for sorting, seemingly arbitrary "algorithmic" surfacing of apps) is that crippling navigation in this way is probably better for their bottom line (in the short term at least) and for gathering ad revenue. It mirrors the way a lot of social media apps are displaying seemingly randomly ordered content mixed with ads (facebook, snapchat for a while but they seem to have given you back the ability to know you've seen all your friends stories for now).
From an end user perspective it's awful, but I assume whatever metrics they're using tell them it's a great idea.
This is spot on. The only incentive the app stores have is to optimize search for results that will likely yield the best income, i.e. suggest apps that a certain user is most likely to pay for (or buy micro transactions in). The whole thing is just one gigantic F2P platform in disguise, if you want to be cynical.
- Providing development tools (push notifications, regular updates to their platforms, market segmentation, beta releases, etc)
- Providing distribution
- Creating a market place for the demand
I'm not saying that 30% is the right amount but to say that the stores are doing nothing useful is a bold disregard for the service they are providing.
It isn't as easy as you are making it out here, it's a chicken egg problem, really. OS vendors need to provide tools to developers or else there will be no apps. No apps means less users which means no customers to sell hardware/ads to.
Microsoft failed to establish a healthy developer community and had to close the whole smartphone department because nobody wanted their phones. Windows Phone was a very good operating system and had very high quality hardware but because the apps were missing, people bought Android and iOS.
But without the app stores and tools, developers won't get their apps to their customers.
At the scale Apple operate None of what you stated above is worth anywhere near 10%, let alone 30%. And for the last few points, they are covered by the Hardware cost which in Apple case cover the software as well. ( Where Windows and Android are covered by other means )
And I don't think you are actually disagreeing with your parents at all. Because all the services they provided and as you have listed are now considered as standard. That is like accepting credit cards and cashiers in Retail stores. They are not providing enough useful valued ON TOP of the standard expected.
How can you argue that it's not worth "anywhere near 10%, let alone 30%" if there are so many firms willing to pay it? The idea of the fees is not to cover the costs of doing business, it's to turn a (ideally significant) profit.
It sounds like your expectation is that a company would not charge as much as the market will accept for a unique product. How much it costs to simply handle e.g. payment processing has relatively little to do with it.
Ideally profits should be incentives for a good service. Instead the profits are a result of the lack of competition because it‘s impossible in iOS‘ case and virtually impossible in Android’s case to compete.
Is that a lack of competition in the actual legal sense of the word? I don't actually know the answer, but my perception is that it's probably not.
Apple does not restrict the ability of another browser to be installed (like Chrome) nor another music service (like Spotify) nor another video service (Amazon). It does charge a high fee for purchases through the App Store platform, but I think reasonable people can disagree about whether or not that's actually anticompetitive.
I think it's incorrect to compare Apple'a high fees to other things that are not app stores, like payment processors. It might be the case that we need more than two mobile operating systems in the market this way Apple and Google have a competitive incentive to reduce their fees. But I think it's fair to mandate a high fee to do things on your operating system if end users and developers will accept it. So far most developers accept it.
> Apple does not restrict the ability of another browser to be installed (like Chrome)
They do not allow you to develop/use any other webkit than the one provided though.
> nor another music service (like Spotify)
Back when I had an iphone, you could not change the default app switches to competing products like spotify and google maps.
> nor another video service (Amazon)
Amazon cannot sell their videos in their app (nor books in kindle) without paying Apple a 30% cut and there is no way users can download an amazon app that allows them to do so because you cannot install software onto IOS devices outside of their app store.
I agree about IOS but it is not hard to download an app for android outside the play store. Amazon has a competing store and fortnite skipped the play store and sells their game straight from the web.
But Fortnite and Amazon are huge. It's almost possible for individual devs or smaller companies to sell apps outside the store. Not technically but logistically. Hence the preceeding "virtually".
They are clearly willing to pay it if they pay it. If users buy these devices knowing in advance that it will be infeasible to install software outside of the app store, I don't think it's fair for developers to act entitled to another software distribution channel.
In particular it doesn't seem anticompetitive to me because Apple/Google charge a fee to every business in return for their service, but don't try to stop competitors from being on the service outright.
>It sounds like your expectation is that a company would not charge as much as the market will accept for a unique product.
Actually I don't have a problem with charging 30%. I just don't think it is worth it. Like Rental, you don't have a choice, unless you don't want to access These customers. I just wish Apple could offer something more, because what they are doing now is rent seeking.
Ideal competitive markets allow for little profit. Significant profits are a sign that a market lacks competition. One can certainly not expect a company to voluntarily lower prices based on a value judgement. It requires competition or, in unusual cases, regulation.
But it is not. The total revenue projected this year for App Store is roughly $50B. I would bet $1000 the average credit card processing fees world wide for is lowered than 2%. With China, EU, AUS, and Japan all has much lower cap on it. The whole yearly revenue for the one of the largest CDN Akamai is only $2.5B. Not only s Apple's data requirement less than Akamai, they now also operate their CDN. There is absolutely no way the Apps Store storage and delivery cost more than 500M to operate, even if Apple were using Akamai.
Given the economy scale advantage, Apple are likely to break even at 4%. So even at say a 5% running cost, Apple is making 25% Net Profits. Giving them 10% of App Store revenue is already a 50% margin business.
Like I said again and again, the physical world roughly the same or more than that. But it has a bigger operational expenses and rent. We cant argue with property prices or Rent, it is the fundamental of how our modern society creates a thing call money. But in a non physical world, Apple and Google needs to demonstrate how this 30% is worth while, rather than pure money grabbing. Google has a much better excuses because its App Store profits will be needed to continue and fund the development of Android Operating System.
The parent's point is that could be handled at the store level. With IAP, you have to decide to split your game and write a bunch of code to do A or do B. Apple could put a time (absolute or use) lock on a game and have it just not open after unless the user buys it. The game is exactly the same during the demo period and after purchase.
In my opinion the 30% fee is reasonable because it provides access to Apple's user base. It's not as though they're specifically obligated to earmark that money to improve the app store itself. The things you're complaining about are valid criticisms, but I don't think the have anything to do with whether or not the fee is appropriate.
In return for 30%, Apple develops and maintains a centralized software distribution channel. It takes care of end to end payment processing, deployment and updates. If you don't believe 30% is reasonable in return for access to that market, you can choose not to develop for that market.
But words like "reasonable" imply some obligation on the part of the company. Why would a company not charge a premium for access to a lucrative distribution channel? Clearly many firms are happy to trade 30% of sales in return for access to that market. From my perspective the issues you've outlined are orthogonal to whether or not Apple's fees are "reasonable."
> If you don't believe 30% is reasonable in return for access to that market, you can choose not to develop for that market
Well, the counter to this is that it is not Apple's userbase. Apple doesn't own those phones. Consumers do, because those consumers paid for them.
The alternative isn't "don't build for this market". The alternative is doing exactly what these companies are doing, and building their own marketplace/appstore/distributing on their own website like Fortnite does.
People have the right to install whatever they want of phones that they own.
I think this is more complex than what you've said in your last sentence. Theoretically you can literally run whatever software you'd like on hardware you've purchased. But I don't think operating system developers targeting that hardware have an intrinsic obligation to sanction arbitrary software installation.
You're stating that as though it's an argument, but I honestly don't follow the point you're trying to make. Under the rent-seeking analogy, yes, Apple built a vast and lucrative apartment complex. Are you saying it's unreasonable to charge a high fee to allow someone to solicit to the people living in that complex on the property it owns and developed?
I get the sense we're not going to be able to come to an understanding here. Based on the way you used that terminology we likely have an axiomatic disagreement.
I really doubt firms are "happy" to trade 30% of their sales for access to the iOS marketplace. They put up with it because it is literally the only way to reach ~50% of the US app marketplace.
I think OP's complaint is that it feels like Apple isn't actually maintaining "the centralized software distribution channel." Apple built something that's good enough, and is in some sense holding their users hostage.
Users would like the ability to buy apps. Developers would like to sell to them. But Apple has created a system where both parties MUST go through Apple. I think this is really key. I don't see a reason why the iOS App Store has to be the only place to buy apps other than that Apple makes more money that way.
What incentive is there for Apple to add new App Store features, improve search, etc.? They've built a system where they're the only option. It doesn't take much to see how this is bad for consumers.
Clearly Apple is providing some value through the app store and deserves a cut, but why 30%? If there was some competition Apple may be forced to lower their rate, but as it stands they can charge whatever they like. It's not a market rate, its whatever Apple can squeeze out of developers.
This. No one would have a problem paying 30% if the store was actually providing some value. Instead, we get no ability to demo. We get no ability to version - I'll continue supporting you for free for version X, but I'll cut you a deal for version Y if you already own version X. No, they make it convoluted for both the consumers and the developers. It just sucks all the way around. And we pay 30% for this mess.
"App Store fees got you down? Meanwhile at Epic, they lowered their take on the Unreal Marketplace from 30% to 12% and retroactively paid back years of fees.
"Epic said this is due to the success of Fortnite. If only Apple and Google had successful products to rely on for income."
Epic's is a useful reference point. The retrospective angle was particularly surprising, but also shows how successful Fortnite has been in terms of revenue.
I really like that. I think the first thing people should do when making a startup is finding a consistent revenue stream and business model. Most companies are actually more about the model than the idea. Hell, even Nike only makes about 6% of profit on their $100 shoes. They can do this because they have a consistent and reliable business model (aka not advertisement income). It's not even the shoes anymore. it's the idea of the shoes.
Additionally, Unreal Engine 4 charges only 5% gross on revenue exceeding 3,000 USD per quarter. Epic's CEO tweeted about these markets taking 30% where other transaction facilitators only take 2-5%.
It feels like in tech there are a ton of leech-like companies attempting to leverage their way into middleman positions and then rest on their laurels while dictating terms to the supply side as they hold the customer side hostage. I'm not a fan of it, and I'm glad that in the past few years there seems to be a growing awareness of it.
Tim Sweeney and Epic have been hugely supportive to other developers and I wish other companies tried to offer as much value and support to the developers that their business rests upon.
Calling Apple a transaction facilitator is a ludicrous way to try to downplay what they actually do. They aren’t just a transaction processer, that’s the cheapest and easiest part of their job. They also host petabytes of apps in hundreds of geographically dispersed and localized app stores, and covers all bandwidth for distributing and updating those apps. And unlike google Apple actually reviews every release of every app by hand, keeping huge amounts of malware off customer devices, and maintaining the high level of confidence developers need to get customers to buy apps.
Now Apple doesn’t need 30%, but they’d lose huge amounts of money at 5%. A more reasonable guess at App Store break-even is that it requires at least 10%.
The host over 2 million apps, in hundreds of geographic locations. With updates, they are distributing billions of releases and updates a year. And some of those apps exceed a gigabyte in size.
Outside of raw bandwidth and storage costs, someone has to run those tens of thousands of servers across the world, and manage development of the distribution software.
Then you need sales and marketing personnel to build and run the App Store, and hundreds of similar staffs to build and manage the hundreds of international stores in dozens of different languages.
Then you need software development teams to build and maintain the
- payment processing, including server infrastructure, the iOS, Mac SDKs, the APIs, etc
- software distribution and updating infrastructure, from tools to manage thousands of servers, as well as track and report, and more Mac/iOS SDKs and sever APIs.
- The App Store itself, with custom app pages, search, advertising, Mobil app versions, web versions, account management, support, etc.
- App Submission infrastructure, including XCode, Swift, Automated App Analysis tools, Bitcode, the Bitcode server infrastructure, crash reporting, TestFlight test distributions and infrastructure, developer accounts including security profile generation/management, ItunesConnect account management including sales and legal reporting along with App distribution interface and controls.
And then there is
- Sales and marketing costs, advertising, developer co-marketing
- Customer support
And finally, developer support. Apple likely has at least a thousand people working in developer support, mostly on app submissions. And they are all in Cupertino, meaning Apple is spending well over $100M a year just on payroll costs for that department alone.
$1B? I’d be surprised if it’s less than triple that. They likely spend close to half a billion on App Store/Developer advertising alone.
You wouldnt count ios development as a cost that apple pays for developers, its the price they pay to lure developers. Just like MS develops windows APIs for free. Developers work for apple, not vice versa, the question is if apple is paying them enough.
App ecosystems or platforms were since decades free for developers, because platforms need developers more than viceversa. Apple’s case is unique, and it comes from their preexisting culture of a cultish, high-paying customer base. It is unfortunate that google and ms. copied their model, i think android app distribution should be free. At this point, i dont think they even did it for the money, but more for appearing to be ‘serious’ in their offering. It was a marketing decision.
If it had been free from the start , companies wouldnt have invested so much on building increasingly higher walled gardens. Apps would be on the web, and some third party would have done a better job of organizing and reviewing them.
I doubt app stores are a big cost as you say. It is pretty obvious from their quality that these companies just dont care about them. They use them to lock in developers.
Do you have a source for that? I'm 99.9% sure this isn't true. I've had apps rejected where the screenshots had non-english characters in the status bar, and rejections because the app had no daily content because they were testing at like 3:00 am our time and we publish our daily content around 10:00 am.
And Apple forces you into this exchange. You can't ask them to simply host a product page like Amazon and leave everything else to you, the app developer.
There's many good UX reasons why Apple does this, but you can't seriously think that they're charging app developers anything reasonably close to the cost Apple incurs because they have literally no incentive to do that; they have a monopoly on iPhone users (much as Google does de facto for Android users).
> They also host petabytes of apps in hundreds of geographically dispersed and localized app stores
So they run a CDN. In the US and Europe, Fastly charges [0] a maximum of $0.12/GB. A messaging app like Threema is 41MB and costs 3CHF (~3USD) where I am. That's ~$0.005 for distribution of a $3 app.
For a 4GB app (the largest Apple supports), you're paying $0.48 but you're also usually charging on the order of $20 for the app, so this is ~2.5%.
Actual bandwidth costs much less. You can buy decent transit for 0.17c/Mbps/month [1] ($0.0005/GB if you max the pipe).
> and covers all bandwidth for distributing and updating those apps
Let's say incremental updates cost 5% (~2MB) each time and you send them once a month for 10 years. That's 240MB of extra download, for a total bandwidth of 281MB/user. That's $0.0372/user for a $3 app, just over 1%.
> And unlike google Apple actually reviews every release of every app by hand, keeping huge amounts of malware off customer devices
That primarily benefits Apple. Apple's policies also cost entire classes of apps _100%_ of their revenue, since Apple prohibits them completely.
First, You made a good run at the per user costs, but whiffed on how many users there are. Apple supports billions of downloads per year.
More importantly, Apple isn’t a mere payment processer, and it certainly isn’t a mere CDN.
Then entire storefront, updated constantly with new marketing programs in hundreds of country specific stores, and in dozens of languages. Then there is the technological infrastructure behind it, from XCode to TestFlight, to crash reporting, to all the payment systems, etc, etc.
And overall developers benefit greatly from App Store review.The average iOS user downloads more apps and spends far more on the App Store in a great part because of the greater safety and security of iOS apps.
There is a certain irony at play here, given both Apple and Google's own fights with tax authorities in many jurisdictions (eg the double Irish and the EU, Australian complaints about tax avoidance, agreements about their use of shell companies in the Cayman Islands or other tax havens, etc.).
I have always wondered what the real cost is to both Google and Apple in running their App Stores? The 30% figure has been a constant - with a few exceptions like the in-app subscriptions after 1 year on iOS down to 15% - for 10 years now but what are the actual revenue vs cost figures involved in running these [billing] stores? What would be a fairer cut... 10%? 15%? 17.8% in large economies and 22.6% in smaller countries (as semi-random numbers), etc.
Currency fluctuations are also important. Apple more so than Google, also seem to make quite some revenue from pegging their prices against the USD and only updating these once or twice a year - and generally only at very favourable forex conversions in Apple's favour. An unintended side effect here is that many non-USA consumers are subsidising USA consumers purchases of both Apple and Google products (because the USD is the benchmark price). Given the reliance on China as the hardware manufacturer, maybe the Yuan would be 'fairer' in many instances? (It won't happen of course due to how Cupertino and Mountain View centric both companies, and by extension, how pro-USA many of their pricing decisions are).
Calculating costs here is tricky. Do you only include the cost for Google running running the Play Store infrastructure itself, or do you also include the costs of developing and running Google Play Services? What about the costs Google has developing Android itself, which is otherwise given away for free?
Good points. Part of the problem with the debate at this point is that there is little to no transparency about any of those costs.
Android is obviously a larger ‘strategic’ play so I would argue that should be excluded and Google Play Services are also likely to either be ‘strategic’ plays (ie Apple offers music, so do we; Customers want movies, let’s offer them too, etc) or potentially revenue positive.
If Google’s and Apple’s accountants can setup magical tax systems across the world - they could also provide some useful data points about the true costs of running their App stores.
As a specific example, I’d be interested to know, what the hosting and bandwidth costs are for the App Stores (likely heavily subsidised given both Apple and Google run cloud platforms including hosting).
At the moment, there is next to no transparency except the “30%” cut and some high-level info in their quarterly financial reports.
'Fortnite' is an allegedly very popular game, the biggest thing since sliced bread. This is going to be distributed without the app being in the app store, not sure if that is just Android, but you get the idea. If the app (or game) is as big as 'Fortnite' then people will just seek it out and get it from source. The app store can be completely bypassed.
For everything else then the 30% app store publisher fee is the level playing field you are dealing with. I do wonder if the realities of the 'Fortnite' way of publishing is what is making people question the app store.
I think the focus on "30%" is a little mis-statement. You can pretty easily argue that 30% is too high, but clearly they aren't going to pass along the 12-15% or whatever it actually costs them (assuming 5-7% for payment, a few more % for server costs and bandwidth, a few more % for customer support and developer support) -- clearly they're going to value their monopoly audience attention at some non-zero number. So what does that bring us to? 20%? 25%?
The real issue isn't the few percentage points the devs would like to claw back, it's with applications that have recurring billing and would prefer not to give a percentage at all. Netflix doesn't want to cut Apple in on subscribers. Neither does Amazon with Kindle. Any percentage based system is going to be unfair to someone: if they take a percentage on upfront purchase cost, Apple/Google will get nothing. If they take a percentage on subsequent revenue or subscription revenue, it'll seem disproportionate on an ongoing basis to the value the companies supply.
Making matters worse, it is not especially feasible to come up with a different rate on a case-per-case basis without grossly distorting the market and magnifying existing first-to-market advantages in an undesireable way.
I'm not sure trying to figure out the "correct" percentage to cover Apple's costs really makes sense.
All those factors you mention are probably better measured as a flat fee per user rather than a percentage of the sale cost. Free apps cost Apple just as much to host and support as paid apps, so why don't they get charged?
The 30% is essentially arbitrary. They're making a healthy profit from the App Store, so 30% must be on the high side. And the amount different apps are paying must vary a huge amount, only loosely correlated with their hosting costs.
Maybe this will make Apple reconsider their entire "software development tax" revenue stream. It is abhorrent that I have to pay them $99 a year to run my own apps on my own device.
(Yes, I know you can install your own app through XCode. That runs for 7 days. Then must be re-signed. It also can't use tons of features including things like App Groups. Not acceptable.)
(Further yes, I know that if you have ever had a paid account, apparently some of the restrictions are relaxed - for example, you apparently get 90 days on your provisioning profiles. This appears to be Noblesse Oblige on the part of Apple and is not a documented policy, so I'm not willing to rely on it.)
I neither need nor want every service I use to have my credit card details. They can use the apple store or they can just do without my money. I'm fine either way.
Yes, I prefer not having my card details stored across so many different services. Even though I trust Netflix to be competent on security, it's one more place I have to remember to update/manage it every time I get a new card.
A friend of mine noted something I'd forgotten while we were discussing this: that cancelling a subscription through the App Store is just a few clicks. Doing it through other channels can be a tremendous pain.
I dislike App Stores and not because of fees. I feel they have made the discovery of good software harder, and reduced the average quality and safety of software that is available, the exact opposite of what they claim is the benefit of an app store.
Having the single portal where you search for things, leads to immense gaming of the system by bad actors. You search for "Chess game" and the good ones are not to be found. Instead you get 100 ad infested, crap. It is a race to the bottom. Everything ends up "free' with ads or dlc or privacy invasion tactics to make money.
And between PWA and WebAssembly, it is going to be even more difficult in the future to force developers to use the store when they can access most of the functionalities they need without paying a penny or having to bend in front a capricious app review policy.
This seems like a pretty good idea. I'd be curious to see how many apps are sold for prices over $20 USD, as my impression was that the vast majority of paid apps were competing at lower price points.
Maybe Apple and Google should be paying app makers instead considering how much more valuable their phones become BECAUSE of apps. If there was perfect competition between more than two OS makers, I'd predict the charge would be closer to 0. Without it, we can only stab into the air to guess what the real clearing price would be.
Android is a platform that allows Google to target advertising and collects user data. The original intent was to make sure mobile users use Google products. They can and do make money from that.
Is there a SaaS opportunity here? Helping developers create a frictionless experience redirecting customers to an optimized web view to complete payment and then back to the app in a seamless way?
Not on iOS at least. You can’t directly take them to a payment web form. You will see that most apps that bypass App Store payments give some text about how they need to go to a website (which is not clickable) to perform the action. Opening up a browser for them will get you rejected.
To me, the worst consequence of the App Store tax is that it aligns the interests of Apple with app developers rather than users (who ultimately provide Apple with much more revenue). Apple promotes things like “Top Grossing” because it makes tons of money off those dumbfuck apps that turn users into broke zombies. If they only got 5%, they’d create an App Store that encouraged and promoted apps that delivered great entertainment at low cost.
To avoid the app store tax, companies can look to Audible as an example. On iOS, I can only add books to my wishlist and have to make the purchase on my computer.
And the experience is pretty awful. There's little explanation of what's going on or how to actually make the purchase. There's a flow that works for Kindle without leaving your phone.
Despite having literally hundreds of thousands of apps, I can't think of a single app that is really "good" in mobile platforms, either ios and android.
Betterment maybe, polished.
Brave Browser looks like chrome so that's good.
But other than that, it's a race to first to market and they are all mediocre to me. Should the barrier of entry be higher?
For everybody who doesn't want to participate in the whole App-Store-Tax economy, I suggest taking a look at Progressive Web Apps which do not need any App Store and work cross-platform. Just be aware that they do not support all APIs, so for some use-cases, they can't compete with the native apps.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 281 ms ] threadValve appear to even be complaining about the 30% fee, that is _equivalent_ to their own fee.
Android technically allows for the same, see the existence of f-droid for example, but the experience is less smooth (more dialogs to tap through) than when using Google Play.
The issue is that the play store is shipped as the default and many people do not know there are other options.
This can be difficult since in the short term it's easiest for every market participant to just use the Play store. Creating a new market takes upfront $ and is a risky business.
Also the friction of buying is lower. I’m not going to put my credit card information in every random website. I will keep a credit card on file with Apple and just use my fingerprint to authorize the purchase.
You absolutely can release Android apps without going through any app store, and if you go through an app store, it doesn't have to be Google's. There are different pros and cons for Google's store, handset maker’s stores (e.g., Samsung has their own), other stores (e.g., Amazon's), and direct distribution of your own apps without a store.
In traditional retail, the publisher only gets 45% as opposed to 70% for the app stores.
https://kotaku.com/5479698/what-your-60-really-buys
The app store narrative has been 'look at how much better developers have it than the old days of retail' when the reality is most of the smaller developers could never realistically sell through the traditional retail channel anyways. (there was a lot more to it than the larger cut involved) The other reality is that mobile devices are locked down in ways that PCs historically have not been (i.e. difficult to impossible for most end users to install software outside of the app store) and the only realistic option they had was to go through the platform owner. (i.e. Apple/Google/Amazon/Microsoft)
I'm all for the app stores getting a cut but the 30% number represents more the fact that the platform owners are gatekeepers rather than any real value being offered.
Most console games are still sold retail because people want the ability to trade them in. In the early 2000's high speed internet wasn't ubiquitous and most software was still being sold in retail.
The app store narrative has been 'look at how much better developers have it than the old days of retail' when the reality is most of the smaller developers could never realistically sell through the traditional retail channel anyways. (there was a lot more to it than the larger cut involved) The other reality is that mobile devices are locked down in ways that PCs historically have not been (i.e. difficult to impossible for most end users to install software outside of the app store) and the only realistic option they had was to go through the platform owner. (i.e. Apple/Google/Amazon/Microsoft)
So the app stores have been a net positive for small developers? How many people are (or should be) paranoid about downloading software from a random site and then putting their credit card information on the same random site? How many that are willing would even go through the trouble of entering their credit card number as opposed to just authorizing the payment through Apple/Google?
Console manufacturers have also demanded a cut of software sold on their platform since the mid 80s. You couldn't sell a game on a console without having signed code on the cartridge/disk and I believe most of the console makers forced you to use them for manufacturering..
Plus, you can do cool things like individualize what's offered to customers in a digital store. While the best Walmart can manage are stores customized a store for the region.
Price is purely a function of supply and demand. If app makers decide that it's not worth the 30% cut that Apple charges to reach the < 20% of phone users that use iOS, they either can increase their price or not sell on Apple platforms.
But realistically, the developers who are making the most money are the ones doing in app purchases for coins, loot boxes, etc. It's not exactly costing them anything to "produce" more coins.
Retail stores take on massive working capital and inventory costs. Of course their 'cut' is going to be higher, and it will be the same in every other retail chain because of the similar underlying economics.
If 'digital app stores' were commoditized, then the 30% would be more like 3% due to the nature of competition.
That also explains why it’s impossible to make real money selling either Android phones or Windows computers.
No. 99% (well not quite, but most) of the economy works this way. It's almost an entirely thin margin business world. Very, very few companies are making sweet margins unless there is some sneaky reason i.e. political patronage, niche markets, etc. etc.. Drugs and Healthcare work on high margins depending on how you look at it. But agriculture, natural resources, almost everything manufactured, entertainment, restaurants, transportation, energy ... hosting (!) most things are low margin businesses.
Homes - homes sell based on location, school zoning, demographic make up (sad but true), etc. and new home builders can often sell at a premium based on services and customization
Cars - sell based on brand more than costs
Furniture -- One word - Ikea
Exercise equipment - Peleton vs NordicTrack
Even upscale restaurants have higher margins than lower scale ones.
Groceries - Whole Foods
Clothes - completely based on brand
'Brand' does not guarantee margin, in most cases, it simply provides a means to exist.
Peleton might make a hefty gross margin on their bikes, but they're also probably losing money due to huge marketing, R&D and operating costs, and they may never make a dime.
IKEA makes a solid profit, but only because they have a massive business at scale, at which point those thin margins add up to something big. Same thing for Walmart, Amazon, and any large Grocery store chain.
Those are all vicious businesses.
High operating costs, huge working capital requirements. It's ugly and cut-throat.
I'm making a hardware product right now, even if we're successful, our net margin per unit will be a tiny fraction of the MSRP. Of MSRP about 60% goes to retailer, about 25% cost to manufacture, about 5% marketing on the unit level, and then we have 10% to pay all our fixed and regular operating costs, brand marketing, R&D etc. and then taxes.
I also don't really think the Apple/Google fee is that unreasonable. Considering the resources, tools, marketplaces, tutorials, payment processing, all the other All dev stuff they provide in general. Yes if your app goes big, they make a lot of money. But for every big app there's something like 9 that fail completely (it's murky due to how many apps aren't intended to profit in the first place, and are just made to attract customers to a brand).
I don't know the numbers though. Maybe they could charge lots less. But just from my single viewpoint, it doesn't "feel" unreasonable.
Of course Apple would argue that they are connecting you to their customers. When there are a million apps in the store I'm not sure how true that is.
However I question whether the App Store is connecting you to those customers in any meaningful way when there is so much competition in there. Sure if you are lucky enough to get to the front page then you can do OK but most don't.
The fee is paying towards the development of Android. Your comparison of "same services" isn't remotely valid.
If you are basing your business on getting exposure in the App Store then you are building it on shaky foundations.
Unless Apple and google start allowing sales outside their stores I don’t think steam is comparable.
Technically this is not correct. Practically it is. You can install Apps on iOS devices without the app store (called sideloading, and it's a PITA): https://beebom.com/how-to-sideload-apps-iphone-ios-10-withou...
I suspect they'll either put a limit on # of free keys or start charging per key, something like 5% of your listed retail price.
No one can launch a competing app service on iOS. Apparently you can on Android, but I'm not sure why no one succeeded yet. Maybe the same reason as no one succeeded yet replacing Steam either, you need some kind of critical mass and that takes time to build.
I'm not sure it's possible to create a hugely successful iPhone app that isn't on the App Store. Apple has a monopoly and is using it to squeeze excessive fees from developers.
The business could choose to launch on Android only, and hope that convinces consumers to switch, but that's about it for options.
It's functionally impossible to release an app on iOS without paying Apple.
Compared to the 0% of self-publishing, Apple's fees are excessive.
Apple's fees aren't excessive because they offer their services and provide their value to every app published through their store. Yes, they could offer a way to publish the app without those features and not charge the fee but that would further complicate the experience for users. I mean, technically, companies are absolutely allowed to host apps for users to side load themselves. It's just that no one wants to do that because it's not worth it when the costs Apple are taking are actually reasonable.
Valve gets 30% of apps distributed using Steam. In other words, only companies that value Steam at the 30% premium will use it -- and many of them don't. Meanwhile Steam has to be responsive to customers because it has competition, so it's forced to be a better product than monopoly app stores.
It's like saying that $25 is "the market price" for eight ounces of tuna fish because there are restaurants that charge that price and some people patronize them, so a monopoly that charges $50/pound in all cases is not charging unreasonable prices.
Whereas most Android phones come with Google apps and the Play Store as the only ways to get new apps.
For IOS though, fortnite launched it in the IOS store because there is no real practical way to get users to install their app outside of Apples app store.
I’m getting very tired of the phrase “de facto” bandied about in front of monopoly as a way to use the latter word in a way that has no legal or technical merit. Words have meanings. Apple has a walled garden which competes with similar products, it’s just that Apple’s is better in many ways. They have a valuable audience, they don’t suffe from the security issues of their competitors, and that may make you want to use them. So use them, or don’t, and accept the trade-offs.
Don’t like Apple? Try android, their competition in the same space.
People just want something they can’t have, so they play word games to make themselves sound righteous rather than selfish or petulant. No amount of talking around the issue or downvotes changes it, and it’s why an AG will laugh in your face if you claim Apple is violating antitrust regulations with their system.
Which is likewise why Apple doesn't have a monopoly on phones.
> Apps is the space for competition, and Apple doesn’t have a monopoly on apps, or phones. In fact you can almost always get the same apps on multiple platforms.
The market isn't the app market itself, it's not that there aren't a hundred flashlight apps, it's the distribution market. All the flashlight apps have to come through Apple.
It's as if Walmart is the only retailer in California. That there are arbitrarily many manufacturers or that other retailers exist in Florida doesn't mean they don't have a retail monopoly in California.
And the fact is you can't get an app for your iPhone from the Play Store. They aren't the same market because they can't be substituted for each other.
IOS device software distribution -> apple has a monopoly
High end phones -> apple probably has a monopoly
Total revenue of phones sold -> apple probably has a monopoly
Number of phones (in use?) by OS -> android has a monopoly
Number of computers by OS -> nobody has a monopoly http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share
Which is why it matters if there are close substitutes or not.
> IOS device software distribution -> apple has a monopoly
There are no good substitutes for this. There is no viable alternative for distributing apps to the people with iOS devices. Distributing apps to people with Android devices isn't a substitute because they're different people, in the same way that distribution in the Northeast is not a substitute for distribution in the Southwest.
> High end phones -> apple probably has a monopoly
There are high end Android phones that are probably adequate substitutes. But if there weren't (or you think they aren't adequate substitutes) then sure.
> Total revenue of phones sold -> apple probably has a monopoly
The market you've specified is "phones" which is obviously not something Apple has a monopoly on. Whole Foods doesn't have a monopoly on food just because they have high margins. There are tons of non-Apple phones if all you need to satisfy to be part of the market is to be a phone.
It may even be a weak market definition because it's too broad -- a feature phone isn't a very good substitute for an iPhone. A better market definition might be smartphones, but even then they still don't have a monopoly. It's not about revenue or margins, it's a question of whether the consumer has a reasonable alternative supplier of something sufficiently equivalent.
> Number of phones (in use?) by OS -> android has a monopoly
The market in that case is would be "phone OS" but then Android has the obvious competition from iOS. Also, Android isn't a company, it's a product. It's nearly impossible for a piece of open source software to have "a monopoly" when literally everyone is allowed to supply it and anyone can do so at trivial cost. All the Android phone manufacturers are each independent suppliers of it.
> Number of computers by OS -> nobody has a monopoly
The market in that case is "computer OS" which is a poor market definition because desktop and phone operating systems are poor substitutes for each other.
This is why I think we need a new way of identifying market abuse.
> The problem with what the EU is doing is that they aren't interested in applying a rigorous standard.
Yeah, this is what I and a lot of other people have a problem with these EU antitrust laws and even GDPR . In the google case, they literally had the android play clauses set from day 1 when they had 0% market share and instead of telling google that they could no longer bundle chrome/search to the play store now that they reached 50% market share in mobile OS (their magic antitrust metric), they waited 7 years and then threw a ridiculous fine at them. If the laws were clear, this wouldn't be a problem.
I can’t understand this at all. If I go through the trouble to create a product and I want to control the user experience for that product, that’s my right and privilege. The market will decide if they want to purchase my product or not.
Consumers have spoken, and spoken extremely loudly, that they like Apple’s approach. Why would you want to deny the right for this product to exist?
It’s an amazing product, and what Apple has accomplished with their App Store is nothing short of incredible. I love their approach and I think they are 100% entitled to charge what they want on their own marketplace.
Neither does my opinion, of course. And either way, the fact that people like the Apple user experience doesn't mean they like or are even informed about the benefits and drawbacks of the iOS App Store model. They may have spoken for that model, or they may hate that model but still buy iPhones because they communicate with the rest of their Apple devices, or because the hardware is innovative and superior, or because they don't want to be tracked by a much scarier surveillance machinery. Without separating the parts and letting each compete on its own, we'll never know what about it is something consumers want and what about it they'd rather pass on.
I'm not calling for an end to products like Apple's. I think it's great that people have access to devices that follow clear policies and security practices which are guaranteed by a trustworthy party.
I do think, though, that this decision should be made by the user in the end. The opportunity to set defaults is already an extremely strong lever for the first-party vendor, and people such as yourself who like it as is have no reason to change anything about it.
I also think that competition can and should happen on different levels, and that control of e.g. hardware or system APIs should not automatically translate to exclusive control over the third-party ecosystem, unless the user explicitly wants this. One possible approach to regulating this, without preventing actual highly integrated products, could be to require the vendor to allow third-party app stores if the product ships with an app store itself. If the iOS experience is actually better with iOS App Store compared to a third-party app store with e.g. lower fees, better search and less stringent controls, why not let them battle it out and let the consumer decide?
It's important to recognize that Apple has created world-class products. It's also important to recognize that the existing duopoly is an extremely strong detractor against competition. It's like the government inviting bids for a giant construction project - if they require the bidders to do everything and the kitchen sink, then only the largest consortiums will be able to apply, whereas if the project is split into several reasonably-sized parts then smaller companies can compete as well and the end result will be cheaper, better executed and more accountable. I think we all agree that competition is a good thing, the question is how large to draw the boundary of what constitutes an integrated product and what should be considered out of scope, to compete in a different market. I think we owe it to society and to future businesses to ensure that a superior product still has a chance of succeeding in the marketplace.
I'm not sure why this is supposed to be controversial. It's not a prohibition on checking signatures, it's just a requirement to give the user the option of doing something else.
Once you sell something it's not yours anymore. Companies shouldn't be allowed to stick up everyone in an ancillary market just because they have more market power.
> I can’t understand this at all. If I go through the trouble to create a product and I want to control the user experience for that product, that’s my right and privilege. The market will decide if they want to purchase my product or not.
That's assuming that markets are perfect. What you're saying would be true if there were two versions of the iPhone, one that could only run signed apps and one that was exactly the same but can also run unsigned apps and the customer chose the first one. But that isn't the case, and because that isn't the case you end up forcing someone who wants an iPhone for a reason other than mandatory signing to accept mandatory signing (and the consequent app store monopoly) even though they don't want it. That isn't the market deciding, it's the manufacturer deciding for the market.
> Consumers have spoken, and spoken extremely loudly, that they like Apple’s approach.
This is not really supported by the evidence. The large majority of phone customers chose Android and even among iPhone customers there are multiple other reasons (hardware, UI, status signaling) to choose an iPhone even if you don't want or don't care about app gatekeeping.
The fact that customers don't want it is the whole issue. The first time most users are given a choice between installing an app they want that isn't approved or not having the app, they're going to install it. And given a choice between a distribution method that restricts apps and then charges 30% more and one that doesn't and has lower prices, they're going to pick the lower prices. Otherwise Apple wouldn't have to lock all the doors and windows from the outside -- you could just choose to never install anything outside Apple's store, even if you had the option to do otherwise.
> This is not really supported by the evidence...
This isn’t about Apple vs Android or market share. The success of iOS speaks for itself, and in particular the success of the App Store speaks for itself. It is self-evident from the billions of dollars that apps have earned (is it tens of billions now?) that the model is successful and widely used both by developers and consumers. Apple users are much more prolific spenders on the Apple App Store than users of the Android market as well, the majority of that money going directly to developers. This is partly demographics, but also partly the security, reliability, and trust provided by the walled garden.
> And given a choice between a distribution method that restricts apps and then charges 30% more and one that doesn't and has lower prices
As long as apps that are not sold through the Apple Store do not use any Apple APIs to operate, that would be fair.
But if you want to use the massive infrastructure that Apple has built [1] then I think you have to play by Apple’s rules.
The iPhone is a device which you own, yes, but it is also a massive collection of services which Apple spends 10s of billions of dollars developing and supporting in order to deliver the overall experience.
As an app developer, the APIs, services, documentation, training, support, and marketing combine to justify the 30%. The “App Store” application itself, and all the search, discovery, reviews, auto-updates, billing, services, and support is just one piece of the massive infra that Apple provides to all the apps running on its platform.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17823937
Requiring everyone to use something and then claiming that everyone wants to use it because everyone uses it is a bit circular, isn't it?
> This is partly demographics, but also partly the security, reliability, and trust provided by the walled garden.
But why do you need the walls instead of just a sign that says "now leaving Apple's garden"? If being in Apple's store means you're trusted and make more money then go be in Apple's store. That still doesn't explain why it should be prohibited for a user to install an app outside of it. And then we would find out which factors actually make the difference, instead of claiming it's this and then taking an action inconsistent with it -- if nobody wanted to install apps outside the store then there would be no reason to prohibit it because no one would be trying to do it.
> As long as apps that are not sold through the Apple Store do not use any Apple APIs to operate, that would be fair.
They don't even allow that. If they did you would soon have alternate APIs from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, Mozilla or others. But Apple encouraging that would be like Microsoft encouraging use of Sun Java. Apple gets more from people using their API than the people get from using it instead of an alternative.
I can buy a Mercedes, and if I want to I can pay a Merc dealership $1400 parts and labor for an ignition coil when the similar part andlabor for a Toyota would be $200. I can also go to a non-Merc shop and seek repairs (and take some risks) for less money. What I can’t do is buy a Mercedes, then turn around and demand that Mercedes sell their parts at Toyota rates and claim that Mercedes has a monopoly on Mercedes.
I mean I could, but I’d rightly be an object of scorn and ridicule. To go back to the WalMart analogy, they have their own store brands as well, and they’re only sold in WalMarts. Why not force them to sell from other outlets, since they’re a monopoly in your fantastical estimation? It’s legal and frankly ethical to restrict sales that way, and a world of other options exist; it’s not WalMart mayo, or no mayo ever again.
By contrast for a real illegal monopoly see Standard Oil or AT&T. If I wanted to use the phone lines, I could pay whatever they wanted or train carrier pigeons. My access to “phone” was entirely a function of whether I was willing to play their game. It wasn’t a matter of having different choices of providers and platforms and marketplaces, it was have a phone with AT&T, or don’t have a phone.
Not according to Apple.
> Why not force them to sell from other outlets, since they’re a monopoly in your fantastical estimation?
They're not a monopoly because the other stores already have products that are adequate substitutes. People can buy a different brand of laundry detergent from a different store without having to replace their washing machine.
> If I wanted to use the phone lines, I could pay whatever they wanted or train carrier pigeons.
Not true -- if you wanted to use phone line all you would have to do is go to Canada where they have non-AT&T phone lines and use them there.
Obviously it isn't very practical to leave the country every time you want to make a phone call, but how is that any different than needing to buy a new phone every time you want to buy an app?
As per usual, competition is a good answer. Competition in making iPhones is nonsensical. Competition in distributing and selling iOS apps isn't, and would be good for the market. Or at least it might be good for the market. That's the whole premise of this discussion, and for most discussions about monopolistic tendencies.
And those transaction fees actually pay for something, like customer protection, SLAs (not a shitty status site) and no, the credit card company doesn't add unskippable ads on top of the checkout process or advertise a scam clone version of what you are trying to buy to you.
You tell me if the app store fees provide 100x as much.
Google copied Apple?
I mean it would be like Amazon paying Apple a cut, if I buy a TV from amazon. AFAIK, it is only for digital goods that Apple charges, but I am not sure how the demarcation works.
On the flip side, if Apple/Google allow any app to use in-app purchases without a commission, then all apps will use in-app purchases for everything.
Yes. That's why they cut out remote control purchasing feature from their iOS app, to avoid hypocrisy charges and to avoid the sticky situation where a steam app tried the same (letting you make microtransaction purchases by remoting in to your phone or something).
Same as why Epic dropped their marketplace cut down from 30% something like one week before their "30% is unfair" press campaign which in turn was used to take the spotlight off criticism of Fortnite's release on Android as a timed exclusive with Samsung's new flagship.
They're complaining Apple is taking too much without alternative. If the app store provided 30% worth of value, it would be voluntarily chosen like Steam is. Why derail with such a ridiculous equivalence?
Apple sells me a locked down hardware platform that requires me to go through them for all software purchases and all data purchases made with that software.
> But just from my single viewpoint, it doesn't "feel" unreasonable.
It seems unreasonable to me that Apple should get a cut of my Amazon Video purchases. Apple adds no value there; they just get in the way and try to take a cut. I already have a relationship with Amazon and when I download a video from Amazon, it costs Apple nothing.
The entire thing where I have to make a purchase through the Amazon website rather than the Amazon or Amazon Video app and then download it with Amazon Video app is just stupid.
Other than inventing the modern phone, writing the operating system and developer tools, running the store, manufacturing the phones people are consuming Amazon's product on and convincing people to buy them...you can argue about what's "fair," but Apple's certainly adding value.
I have voted with my wallet. But it is getting harder to do so, soon only linux will be left.
It's similar to Fortnite's model: sell the game at a low cost (free actually), and then make money from inessential addons (skins).
You do have something to do with the os. Your app is running on the os.
IBM Simon, 1992.
Applr popularised, they didn't invent. Ironically given the target of their 1984 ad.
Come on now.
> writing the operating system
Which OS, iOS, that the phone purchaser inherently paid for? Or macOS, that the computer purchaser inherently paid for?
> developer tools
Which you need to purchase a developer license for to be useful.
Apple is adding value, AND double dipping. Most of your examples are things they've already been compensated for.
They invented the app ecosystem, which is far more important than just inventing a phone. Without Apple, the application market would still be controlled by Sprint and AT&T and Verizon.
Not defending Apple or attacking it, just pointing out the facts.
They can keep their 30% cut if they allow me to sideload apps from external sources.
I don't know if you've used an iPhone, but do you really think AT&T's walled garden would have anything approaching the quality of the best apps on the App Store?
Sadly, people have forgotten how much life sucked for mobile developers before the iPhone. Apple's contribution is reflected in various peoples' prejudices and agendas, but not in history books. Only Nixon could go to China, and only Jobs could have stared down AT&T from a position of weakness.
I'm not an Apple partisan, and I'm definitely not going to defend the concept of locking a general-purpose computing platform away from its own users, but I'll always give him credit for that.
Do roads add value? Should trucks pay a 30% of their cargo retail price in road tolls?
I agree with your point that Apple adds value. I just do not see that as a justification to take a 30% share of all apps that run on their devices.
This is a good point. But I would rather see this apps more highly taxed than to allow monopolistic empires to grow.
No. :)
Well, what are you saying? I seriously don’t understand what you meant.
Which is why the article emphasized Netflix trying to get customers to sign up through their web site, and not the app.
What is more unfair is that Apple forbids apps to open/link websites where subscriptions can be done to “workaround” the iTunes subscription. If you take Spotify for instance and login as free user, there are absolutely zero mentions that you can upgrade to premium, because they decided to lose those potential customers and rather let them know through other channels of their purchasing options (eg: emails).
On the other hand, this creates a very safe and simple environment for iPhone users. Absolutely NO app asks for a credit card, ever. You either pay one-click safely through iTunes, or nothing. There is no phishing, no mismanaged credit card handling, no credit cards “stolen by hackers from the app I installed into my iPhone”. I’m not saying this fully justifies the above unfair rule, but it’s at least a partial positive side effect.
Slight anecdote, because of that policy, Amazon doesn't support links to Amazon from Kindle Books. Which is fine 99.999% of the time. Until you buy a book about AWS and you can't click on any of the links to documentation on Amazon's websites....
Having recently jumped through the series of hoops necessary to cancel an NYTimes subscription, I am strongly biased towards App Store and Amazon-Prime-based subscriptions, even though they are arguably unfair to the providers.
However, Apple also wants a cut if I were to purchase a movie through the Amazon Video app. Amazon has disallowed such purchases for this reason. Instead, I have to go back to the web, make the purchase, and then I can view it with the app.
Some may argue that this is a fair price for having your app hosted on the app store. However, since Apple prevents any other means of me getting apps on my phone, I find it unfair rent-seeking.
Worse, Apple very clearly wants subscriptions to work just like in-app purchases.
Your rant is misplaced and you've missed the point entirely. I never said Apple adds no value. I think they add quite a bit of value, which is why I've bought a number of their products. I am talking about a specific case for which Apple thinks it is due 30%.
Apple does not add value by inserting itself into a transaction I am trying to conduct with Amazon. I've already paid for all the value. First to Apple for the device, and then to Amazon for the data. Am I or Amazon supposed to pay Apple for my use of the device as well? And if so... where is the value added?
In truth, The App Store is far more than a mere payment processor, though it might be best in the world at that. The costs of hosting, distributing and updating two million apps across hundreds of localized stores, and also vetting every release and update for those millions of apps, is immense.
All their work makes the App Store easy and safe to use anywhere in the world and that helps developers sell more apps.
But Apple doesn't have a majority of market share (by number of devices), so, in my opinion, antitrust regulators have completely discounted their behavior.
On the other hand, the experience of using Apple Pay is miles beyond Google Checkout/Wallet/Pay/Android Pay/whatever marketing's new name-of-the-week-is, and only allowing One Blessed Way of taking payment on Apple devices is a big component of that. Having one consistent flow that I can execute in three seconds from muscle memory really does make buying-from-random-apps-and-retailers experience much nicer and more predictable than it is on the web and on other mobile platforms.
I strongly suspect that, given enough time to compensate for the existing momentum of the App Store, if an alternative App Store was an option, Apple would either improve its offerings, lower what it charges, or see a mass migration of publishers away from the App Store.
Edit: Clarity of meaning.
You can go into the Google Play store (which most people would think was the "official" and "safe" method of getting apps) and still get malware and/or a virus on your Android phone. Now imagine that Google offered both an official Play store and an alternative open Play store. Which do you think the majority of users would use and have a positive opinion of?
There's no reason for Apple to offer that on their phones since it dilutes the customer experience. Anyone that would care about doing that can still do that via XCode by side-loading the apps.
Case in point - where's the competitor for the Mac App Store on macOS? There's not. Users have to do all the legwork themselves. That's literally no different than side-loading your own apps.
Yeah, double-clicking that DMG and dragging the .app 30 pixels to the Applications shortcut is a lot of work.
>That's literally no different than side-loading your own apps.
Yup, clicking and dragging is the same as configuring a different machine to properly build and provision.
You're being purposely disingenuous.
Second: many, many sites host their own DMG downloads, with zero fake download buttons. I don't think searching for an app's website on Google is significantly harder than searching for an app in the App Store (also I'm not sure typing in search terms is "one click", but whatever). I'll admit that using the App Store is slightly less work to install stuff, and somewhat more secure.
But from a user standpoint (I use a Mac with one or two App Store apps and dozens of DMG-installer-based apps) it's not a huge difference. And from a developer standpoint, that's not worth 30% of my revenue.
This exists now and is free. I’m not saying it’s a good user experience (especially the one week limitation), but it’s definitely possible and legit / legal / free.
Why do you think that is?
Promotion: only the ones that seem to be successful anyways. Mostly no niche apps
Distribution: yes
Analytics: Not everybody needs this and they're pretty basic, too.
They also introduce hurdles: Rating system (can be easily abused), or in the case of the App Store: review process (sometimes somewhat arbitrary), no insight into payments (you can't even issue a refund).
One service that is indeed quite useful: They handle all payment processing and country's tax. You just get a single payment wired to your bank account. Makes your own taxes a lot easier. This and distribution are probably the biggest benefit for most apps (especially niche apps), but does this justify a 30% cut?
Steam is almost exactly the same way because it's not like you can take your Steam purchase and use it without Steam. Yes, you can buy DLC and other add-ons directly from the publisher if you wanted to but that's moreso because of how the publishers have created their products rather than how Steam works as a platform.
As for your Amazon example, Apple does absolutely add value there. They manage and keep track of all your purchases and payments so that there's a single, unified method for both paying and resolving issues. Additionally, since Apple functions as the payment processor, you're also paying for the security functionality. The only reason you have to make a purchase from the Amazon website is because Amazon wants to control the purchasing and doesn't want to pay Apple for their payment processing.
It's just a difference of whether you prefer the consistency of the experience that Apple prefers at the expense of other companies or whether you prefer to deal with several different experiences that could potentially open everything up for fraud and problems. People who aren't as tech savvy or who don't want to have to wade through a bunch of BS just to make a purchase may prefer Apple's method. Others may prefer digging through and doing all that in order to have a broader pool to choose from.
A. You can choose to buy an Android phone like 80%+ of the smart phone world.
B. You can buy content outside of the Apple store and use it within the app (Amazon, Udemy, Spotify, Google Play Music, every video streaming service, etc.)
It seems unreasonable to me that Apple should get a cut of my Amazon Video purchases.
They don't, in fact you can't buy Amazon content within the app.
I like having all my subscriptions in the same place so I can easily see what I'm paying and cancel.
Predictably, this is where the goalposts have moved[1] but it's really orthogonal to whether there's value or not. Also as pointed out elsewhere, Steam is in a competitive market and charges the same commission. Also in Apple's favor is the well attested to value of the App Store vs Google Play and others in terms of raw revenue.
[1] 'Predictably' as in "Being locked down or not is a red herring to the value argument" in grandparent
That’s the value add IMO, not the aluminum case, the Apple logo, or anything else. A locked garden isn’t perfect, but it’s better than an open sewer.
The Apple App Store does not fill all those conditions. In fact, I can safely say it does not do some of things you say, including the part about stuff just working.
Bethesda, for example, recently announced that they're launching Fallout 76 on their own personal launcher (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/08/fallout-76s-pc-versio...).
I've noticed this trend in the game industry. Any game company that is large enough will work on their own launcher (look at Blizzard, Epic Games, EA, etc.)
The entire platform the app runs on was created by Apple. The hardware, the OS, the programming language, the SDKs.
Thousands of APIs used to build the apps, maybe a million pages of documentation on those APIs.
All the toolchain to develop, build, test, and deploy apps for purchase in hundreds of countries including customer profiles, billing, and support.
Billions of dollars of iCloud infrastructure for backend services to support everything from push notifications, data sync, backup, automatic updates, etc.
Then you get into the actual app store and you have all the work that went into the UX there for discovering, installing, buying and reviewing apps. In-app purchases and subscription services to support different business models. Family sharing, parental controls, parental approval requirements for kids’ phones.
I could go on for hours and probably still miss huge swaths of functionality that Apple invested millions of dollars into, just so that you could pull up chair and with a few lines of code start writing an app that can reach billions of devices.
Not to mention all the marketing and training and support Apple does to prime their customers to be big users of the App Store.
Yeah, and the bandwidth to download the app as well.
Personally I think 30% is a steal for what you get in return.
Oh, and I’ll just add one more thing; you can distribute your app for free and you pay Apple nothing (or nearly nothing) for the benefit of all their hard work and infrastructure and support.
Actually the ratio is more like 1 to 500k. There are millions of apps in both stores, but I'd bet less than 1000 make significant income exclusively from the app stores.
Nobody is locked to valve on PC. Large game publishers have their own PC stores precisely to avoid getting ripped off by Valve. EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay, Blizzard/Activision has Battle.net. MS has the Microsoft Store. There are many little indie stores with their own handling of profits, like itch.io :
>itch.io costs nothing to use. You are free to create pages and upload your content without ever having to pay anything. Advertisements will never be placed on any of your pages.
>You get to decide how much you want to support itch.io by choosing what percentage of your sales should go towards our operational costs and continued development of the platform. We call that open revenue sharing.
Subscription MMORPGs also all have their own payment schemes and external launchers that bypass Valve's little greedy hands.
Being locked to a single app store on any platform is a mistake. PCs are great because we don't suffer this, for now. Until MS decides to make Windows S the default and lock people from freely switching to a normal version of Windows.
There’s a reason the new Fallout 76 is skipping Steam and will be sold through a Bethesda launcher.
Don't want to give Apple their cut? Do what Amazon does, and don't sell through the App Store.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-kindle-2011-2
But if you have an iOS only app? Good luck arguing your way out of the rule.
I’m not sure someone like Fortnight could get away with bypassing it. If they did it would only be due to being a special case due to pull. No normal app could get away with it, you’d get pulled fast.
Recent exodus from apple app store over in app purchases began with Tencent strongarming Apple to let them run their own in app payments under a threat of them quitting.
It doesn't require one to be a brilliant thinker to ask "if Tencent was allowed to, why can't I?"
for content subscription businesses that are multi-platform its a bit of an absurd situation. You can't really charge 50% more on mobile platforms. Depending on where your user randomly decides to sign up your revenue and lifetime value of that user is suddenly 2/3rds of what it otherwise would be, despite costs being the same.
Instead, we got:
- Store APIs that to this day are stupidly complex to get right in all cases, making you wonder why it’s so hard
- No support for very common, decades-old pricing schemes like “free demo, then buy” (except through convoluted means)
- Stagnant app store designs (esp. Mac, for YEARS)
- Absolutely terrible search
- Stupid same-apps-on-list-every-week “categories”
- A strong preference to reward obvious overpriced scams/gambling games, etc. instead of rewarding development of apps that are hard
If you have an ad-based model, there's less of a reason improve those other systems, since the store might be able to extract 75% of the value created if you get developers bidding against each other to buy visibility. But it sucks for everyone except the app store owner.
It's fluid, and has great use of typography, spacing and colors. I don't see how it is criticize the design of it, the design is the best part. The missing features (like demo versions not being possible) etc and bad policies are the issues, not the design.
An annoying thing with the new design is that the Today content only is saved for a week, past articles and selections gets lost (archiving the editorial content would actually be a smart website idea, if you disregard the copyright issues), ideally it should be indefinitely scrollable.
Edit: It's frustrating that people don't bother explaining what is wrong with the design of the App Store instead of just downvoting me.
[1] https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/
It's quite frankly an obnoxious, Apple has to control everything, replacement for all of the other various startups who were creating marketing channels for developers to reach new users.
The search was crap, the recommended apps were crap, the way the data was presented is horrible, etc. I didn't downvote you, but it seems obvious to me that their tools and design were not intended with UX in mind, but profits.
We have much more powerful CPU, In-Memory DB and SSD, Searching within a comparatively small dataset that is the App Store is a solved problem more than a decade ago and much more so now. Instead we got a appalling App Store search. It could simply mean one thing, Apple just doesn't care.
I wouldn't have complain if it was from any other companies. But it is Apple, they need to be better. Why do they need to do it? Steve gave an answer long ago, "Because we give a Damn!"
My gut feeling based on how search and navigation is structured in the play store (a few broad categories, no option for sorting, seemingly arbitrary "algorithmic" surfacing of apps) is that crippling navigation in this way is probably better for their bottom line (in the short term at least) and for gathering ad revenue. It mirrors the way a lot of social media apps are displaying seemingly randomly ordered content mixed with ads (facebook, snapchat for a while but they seem to have given you back the ability to know you've seen all your friends stories for now).
From an end user perspective it's awful, but I assume whatever metrics they're using tell them it's a great idea.
- Taking care of payment processing
- Storing the user's credit card information
- Providing a ton of pricing options
- Providing analytics and crash monitoring tools
- Providing deployment tools
- Providing development tools (push notifications, regular updates to their platforms, market segmentation, beta releases, etc)
- Providing distribution
- Creating a market place for the demand
I'm not saying that 30% is the right amount but to say that the stores are doing nothing useful is a bold disregard for the service they are providing.
Microsoft failed to establish a healthy developer community and had to close the whole smartphone department because nobody wanted their phones. Windows Phone was a very good operating system and had very high quality hardware but because the apps were missing, people bought Android and iOS.
But without the app stores and tools, developers won't get their apps to their customers.
And I don't think you are actually disagreeing with your parents at all. Because all the services they provided and as you have listed are now considered as standard. That is like accepting credit cards and cashiers in Retail stores. They are not providing enough useful valued ON TOP of the standard expected.
It sounds like your expectation is that a company would not charge as much as the market will accept for a unique product. How much it costs to simply handle e.g. payment processing has relatively little to do with it.
It's a tough question.
I expect that will be a pretty controversial opinion, but I'm just being honest.
I don't think they're anti-competitive. But they are monopolies.
http://gsl.mit.edu/media/programs/south-africa-summer-2015/m...
https://i.imgur.com/ooJmwsg.png
Apple does not restrict the ability of another browser to be installed (like Chrome) nor another music service (like Spotify) nor another video service (Amazon). It does charge a high fee for purchases through the App Store platform, but I think reasonable people can disagree about whether or not that's actually anticompetitive.
I think it's incorrect to compare Apple'a high fees to other things that are not app stores, like payment processors. It might be the case that we need more than two mobile operating systems in the market this way Apple and Google have a competitive incentive to reduce their fees. But I think it's fair to mandate a high fee to do things on your operating system if end users and developers will accept it. So far most developers accept it.
They do not allow you to develop/use any other webkit than the one provided though.
> nor another music service (like Spotify)
Back when I had an iphone, you could not change the default app switches to competing products like spotify and google maps.
> nor another video service (Amazon)
Amazon cannot sell their videos in their app (nor books in kindle) without paying Apple a 30% cut and there is no way users can download an amazon app that allows them to do so because you cannot install software onto IOS devices outside of their app store.
In particular it doesn't seem anticompetitive to me because Apple/Google charge a fee to every business in return for their service, but don't try to stop competitors from being on the service outright.
Actually I don't have a problem with charging 30%. I just don't think it is worth it. Like Rental, you don't have a choice, unless you don't want to access These customers. I just wish Apple could offer something more, because what they are doing now is rent seeking.
Let's throw more arbitrary numbers around...
Given the economy scale advantage, Apple are likely to break even at 4%. So even at say a 5% running cost, Apple is making 25% Net Profits. Giving them 10% of App Store revenue is already a 50% margin business.
Like I said again and again, the physical world roughly the same or more than that. But it has a bigger operational expenses and rent. We cant argue with property prices or Rent, it is the fundamental of how our modern society creates a thing call money. But in a non physical world, Apple and Google needs to demonstrate how this 30% is worth while, rather than pure money grabbing. Google has a much better excuses because its App Store profits will be needed to continue and fund the development of Android Operating System.
Firms are willing to pay it to Apple and Google, and not competitors.
"Creating a marketplace" can have well over 30% value.
In return for 30%, Apple develops and maintains a centralized software distribution channel. It takes care of end to end payment processing, deployment and updates. If you don't believe 30% is reasonable in return for access to that market, you can choose not to develop for that market.
But words like "reasonable" imply some obligation on the part of the company. Why would a company not charge a premium for access to a lucrative distribution channel? Clearly many firms are happy to trade 30% of sales in return for access to that market. From my perspective the issues you've outlined are orthogonal to whether or not Apple's fees are "reasonable."
Well, the counter to this is that it is not Apple's userbase. Apple doesn't own those phones. Consumers do, because those consumers paid for them.
The alternative isn't "don't build for this market". The alternative is doing exactly what these companies are doing, and building their own marketplace/appstore/distributing on their own website like Fortnite does.
People have the right to install whatever they want of phones that they own.
It's called "rent-seeking".
I get the sense we're not going to be able to come to an understanding here. Based on the way you used that terminology we likely have an axiomatic disagreement.
I think OP's complaint is that it feels like Apple isn't actually maintaining "the centralized software distribution channel." Apple built something that's good enough, and is in some sense holding their users hostage.
Users would like the ability to buy apps. Developers would like to sell to them. But Apple has created a system where both parties MUST go through Apple. I think this is really key. I don't see a reason why the iOS App Store has to be the only place to buy apps other than that Apple makes more money that way.
What incentive is there for Apple to add new App Store features, improve search, etc.? They've built a system where they're the only option. It doesn't take much to see how this is bad for consumers.
Clearly Apple is providing some value through the app store and deserves a cut, but why 30%? If there was some competition Apple may be forced to lower their rate, but as it stands they can charge whatever they like. It's not a market rate, its whatever Apple can squeeze out of developers.
"Epic said this is due to the success of Fortnite. If only Apple and Google had successful products to rely on for income."
— https://twitter.com/agilethumbs/status/1029804861477412865
https://solecollector.com/news/2014/12/how-much-it-costs-nik...
Edit: EC == European Commission
https://mobile.twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/89831654549...
It feels like in tech there are a ton of leech-like companies attempting to leverage their way into middleman positions and then rest on their laurels while dictating terms to the supply side as they hold the customer side hostage. I'm not a fan of it, and I'm glad that in the past few years there seems to be a growing awareness of it.
Tim Sweeney and Epic have been hugely supportive to other developers and I wish other companies tried to offer as much value and support to the developers that their business rests upon.
Now Apple doesn’t need 30%, but they’d lose huge amounts of money at 5%. A more reasonable guess at App Store break-even is that it requires at least 10%.
The host over 2 million apps, in hundreds of geographic locations. With updates, they are distributing billions of releases and updates a year. And some of those apps exceed a gigabyte in size.
Outside of raw bandwidth and storage costs, someone has to run those tens of thousands of servers across the world, and manage development of the distribution software.
Then you need sales and marketing personnel to build and run the App Store, and hundreds of similar staffs to build and manage the hundreds of international stores in dozens of different languages.
Then you need software development teams to build and maintain the - payment processing, including server infrastructure, the iOS, Mac SDKs, the APIs, etc - software distribution and updating infrastructure, from tools to manage thousands of servers, as well as track and report, and more Mac/iOS SDKs and sever APIs. - The App Store itself, with custom app pages, search, advertising, Mobil app versions, web versions, account management, support, etc. - App Submission infrastructure, including XCode, Swift, Automated App Analysis tools, Bitcode, the Bitcode server infrastructure, crash reporting, TestFlight test distributions and infrastructure, developer accounts including security profile generation/management, ItunesConnect account management including sales and legal reporting along with App distribution interface and controls.
And then there is - Sales and marketing costs, advertising, developer co-marketing - Customer support
And finally, developer support. Apple likely has at least a thousand people working in developer support, mostly on app submissions. And they are all in Cupertino, meaning Apple is spending well over $100M a year just on payroll costs for that department alone.
$1B? I’d be surprised if it’s less than triple that. They likely spend close to half a billion on App Store/Developer advertising alone.
App ecosystems or platforms were since decades free for developers, because platforms need developers more than viceversa. Apple’s case is unique, and it comes from their preexisting culture of a cultish, high-paying customer base. It is unfortunate that google and ms. copied their model, i think android app distribution should be free. At this point, i dont think they even did it for the money, but more for appearing to be ‘serious’ in their offering. It was a marketing decision.
If it had been free from the start , companies wouldnt have invested so much on building increasingly higher walled gardens. Apps would be on the web, and some third party would have done a better job of organizing and reviewing them.
I doubt app stores are a big cost as you say. It is pretty obvious from their quality that these companies just dont care about them. They use them to lock in developers.
Do you have a source for that? I'm 99.9% sure this isn't true. I've had apps rejected where the screenshots had non-english characters in the status bar, and rejections because the app had no daily content because they were testing at like 3:00 am our time and we publish our daily content around 10:00 am.
There's many good UX reasons why Apple does this, but you can't seriously think that they're charging app developers anything reasonably close to the cost Apple incurs because they have literally no incentive to do that; they have a monopoly on iPhone users (much as Google does de facto for Android users).
So they run a CDN. In the US and Europe, Fastly charges [0] a maximum of $0.12/GB. A messaging app like Threema is 41MB and costs 3CHF (~3USD) where I am. That's ~$0.005 for distribution of a $3 app.
For a 4GB app (the largest Apple supports), you're paying $0.48 but you're also usually charging on the order of $20 for the app, so this is ~2.5%.
Actual bandwidth costs much less. You can buy decent transit for 0.17c/Mbps/month [1] ($0.0005/GB if you max the pipe).
> and covers all bandwidth for distributing and updating those apps
Let's say incremental updates cost 5% (~2MB) each time and you send them once a month for 10 years. That's 240MB of extra download, for a total bandwidth of 281MB/user. That's $0.0372/user for a $3 app, just over 1%.
> And unlike google Apple actually reviews every release of every app by hand, keeping huge amounts of malware off customer devices
That primarily benefits Apple. Apple's policies also cost entire classes of apps _100%_ of their revenue, since Apple prohibits them completely.
[0]: https://www.fastly.com/pricing [1]: https://www.ixreach.com/services/promotions/global-10g-trans...
More importantly, Apple isn’t a mere payment processer, and it certainly isn’t a mere CDN.
Then entire storefront, updated constantly with new marketing programs in hundreds of country specific stores, and in dozens of languages. Then there is the technological infrastructure behind it, from XCode to TestFlight, to crash reporting, to all the payment systems, etc, etc.
And overall developers benefit greatly from App Store review.The average iOS user downloads more apps and spends far more on the App Store in a great part because of the greater safety and security of iOS apps.
There is a certain irony at play here, given both Apple and Google's own fights with tax authorities in many jurisdictions (eg the double Irish and the EU, Australian complaints about tax avoidance, agreements about their use of shell companies in the Cayman Islands or other tax havens, etc.).
I have always wondered what the real cost is to both Google and Apple in running their App Stores? The 30% figure has been a constant - with a few exceptions like the in-app subscriptions after 1 year on iOS down to 15% - for 10 years now but what are the actual revenue vs cost figures involved in running these [billing] stores? What would be a fairer cut... 10%? 15%? 17.8% in large economies and 22.6% in smaller countries (as semi-random numbers), etc.
Currency fluctuations are also important. Apple more so than Google, also seem to make quite some revenue from pegging their prices against the USD and only updating these once or twice a year - and generally only at very favourable forex conversions in Apple's favour. An unintended side effect here is that many non-USA consumers are subsidising USA consumers purchases of both Apple and Google products (because the USD is the benchmark price). Given the reliance on China as the hardware manufacturer, maybe the Yuan would be 'fairer' in many instances? (It won't happen of course due to how Cupertino and Mountain View centric both companies, and by extension, how pro-USA many of their pricing decisions are).
Android is obviously a larger ‘strategic’ play so I would argue that should be excluded and Google Play Services are also likely to either be ‘strategic’ plays (ie Apple offers music, so do we; Customers want movies, let’s offer them too, etc) or potentially revenue positive.
If Google’s and Apple’s accountants can setup magical tax systems across the world - they could also provide some useful data points about the true costs of running their App stores.
As a specific example, I’d be interested to know, what the hosting and bandwidth costs are for the App Stores (likely heavily subsidised given both Apple and Google run cloud platforms including hosting).
At the moment, there is next to no transparency except the “30%” cut and some high-level info in their quarterly financial reports.
For everything else then the 30% app store publisher fee is the level playing field you are dealing with. I do wonder if the realities of the 'Fortnite' way of publishing is what is making people question the app store.
The real issue isn't the few percentage points the devs would like to claw back, it's with applications that have recurring billing and would prefer not to give a percentage at all. Netflix doesn't want to cut Apple in on subscribers. Neither does Amazon with Kindle. Any percentage based system is going to be unfair to someone: if they take a percentage on upfront purchase cost, Apple/Google will get nothing. If they take a percentage on subsequent revenue or subscription revenue, it'll seem disproportionate on an ongoing basis to the value the companies supply.
Making matters worse, it is not especially feasible to come up with a different rate on a case-per-case basis without grossly distorting the market and magnifying existing first-to-market advantages in an undesireable way.
All those factors you mention are probably better measured as a flat fee per user rather than a percentage of the sale cost. Free apps cost Apple just as much to host and support as paid apps, so why don't they get charged?
The 30% is essentially arbitrary. They're making a healthy profit from the App Store, so 30% must be on the high side. And the amount different apps are paying must vary a huge amount, only loosely correlated with their hosting costs.
(Yes, I know you can install your own app through XCode. That runs for 7 days. Then must be re-signed. It also can't use tons of features including things like App Groups. Not acceptable.)
(Further yes, I know that if you have ever had a paid account, apparently some of the restrictions are relaxed - for example, you apparently get 90 days on your provisioning profiles. This appears to be Noblesse Oblige on the part of Apple and is not a documented policy, so I'm not willing to rely on it.)
A friend of mine noted something I'd forgotten while we were discussing this: that cancelling a subscription through the App Store is just a few clicks. Doing it through other channels can be a tremendous pain.
Having the single portal where you search for things, leads to immense gaming of the system by bad actors. You search for "Chess game" and the good ones are not to be found. Instead you get 100 ad infested, crap. It is a race to the bottom. Everything ends up "free' with ads or dlc or privacy invasion tactics to make money.
Betterment maybe, polished.
Brave Browser looks like chrome so that's good.
But other than that, it's a race to first to market and they are all mediocre to me. Should the barrier of entry be higher?