Ironically, I believe all this scrutiny on Apple really started with degraded developer relations and their 30% take on in app sales.
If they had invested in better dev relations and dropped their 30% take (instead of coming up with all the weird ways you have to qualify for lower rates, which don't cover all scenarios), I don't think there would have been enough noise from below on this.
I’m happy with my 15% but the 30% never bothered me either.
I still remember the cheers when the 30% was announced because it was vastly better than what the splits were before the launch of the App Store and even now it’s an industry standard.
> (instead of coming up with all the weird ways you have to qualify for lower rates, which don't cover all scenarios)
Not sure what you’re alluding to here.
You essentially automatically qualify if you have less than $1MM in revenue, you tick a few boxes and answer a few questions and within 3 minutes you’re done.
There are some very niche edge cases that might disqualify you to prevent gaming the system, but those are extremely rare.
More than 90% of the developers fall under the lower 15%, but I’m sure some of the big juggernauts are still unhappy that they’re on the 30% tier.
In a fit of irony, lowering the commission to 15% will prove to be a big defensive argument in future antitrust cases, as all developers, including myself, simply pocketed the difference, killing one of the main arguments in cases like that: that these commissions cause higher prices for end users.
The way the experts gave testimony in the cases that so far have occurred, a percentage point or two difference in commission rate would cause huge price swings, moreover, their impromptu studies to support their testimonies claimed that a price difference of a few cents would have huge implications for consumer’s willingness to make the purchase.
It sounded counterintuitive to me then, and now I’ve seen that it truly was nonsense.
Apple in the meantime has been able to collect a treasure trove of data that shows that even a cut of 15% (roughly 3x more than the most ambitious hypothetical in testimonies) couldn’t sway the prices downwards for the end user.
It's not just the price that's outrageous, but also anti-competitive terms that come with it.
You're not allowed to have a better price outside of the App Store. iOS users aren't paying for their preferred payment system, it's everyone else subsidizing Apple's cut.
You're not allowed to give customers a choice of payment methods (people like Apple's subscription, but some may prefer PayPal, especially for multi-platform products). You're not allowed to say they exist outside of the App Store. You're not allowed to even say the word "Android" in the App Store description.
Apple intentionally bundles and mixes together security, convenience, and anti-competitive terms. This confuses the discussion, because if you protest the inflated price, or the unfair terms, they say "oh, so you want users to get malware, huh!?".
The price is high for what you get — an inflexible payment system without ability to offer direct customer support for the payments, and a lottery ticket to maybe appear somewhere else in the store than search results for your app's name, with your competitor's ad first.
Low-margin businesses can't exist with Apple's pricing. Even higher-margin business sucks with Apple - 40% margin is good, but when 30% goes to Apple, Apple earns 3x more than you do.
If I develop and app, and market it myself, and already have a relationship with my customers, Apple just inserts themselves with a "product" I don't want, my users may not want, but we're forced to buy it.
Add to the list the fact that the rules are not applied equally. Big companies can get special deals when Apple feels like it. Small devs can get randomly screwed when their reviewer misunderstands a rule.
Reading your comment makes me wonder if you have personal experience with the App Store because it’s the kind of criticism I read in tech articles but doesn’t entirely line up with the reality on the ground (if not outright false).
> You're not allowed to have a better price outside of the App Store. iOS users aren't paying for their preferred payment system, it's everyone else subsidizing Apple's cut.
This is simply not true. You’re not required to have price parity with IAPs if you also sell access to the service by other means.
> You're not allowed to give customers a choice of payment methods (people like Apple's subscription, but some may prefer PayPal, especially for multi-platform products). You're not allowed to say they exist outside of the App Store.
This one is half true (if we’re not talking about an app that facilitates purchase of physical goods).
You can’t add a PayPal payment option within the app, but you can direct users to your website to sign up, at which point you can give them any payment option (sans IAP).
There are entire app categories called “reader apps” that specifically utilize this.
> Apple intentionally bundles and mixes together security, convenience, and anti-competitive terms. This confuses the discussion, because if you protest the inflated price, or the unfair terms, they say "oh, so you want users to get malware, huh!?".
To a certain extent the security argument is valid, but more so in terms of app distribution and less so in terms of payments.
> The price is high for what you get
Depends on which price we’re talking about. The 15% or the 30%.
> — an inflexible payment system without ability to offer direct customer support for the payments, and a lottery ticket to maybe appear somewhere else in the store than search results for your app's name, with your competitor's ad first.
Direct support for payments has been made available a while ago. Both in terms of giving the customer a refund as well as in making sure the customer doesn’t receive a refund when they’ve used up consumable purchases.
Caveat is however that it requires a significant backend to utilize these options and most smaller devs prefer that Apple handles this for them.
> Low-margin businesses can't exist with Apple's pricing. Even higher-margin business sucks with Apple - 40% margin is good, but when 30% goes to Apple, Apple earns 3x more than you do.
Again, you’re assuming a 30% cut where most are subject to a 15% cut. Other than that this is a theoretical argument, software generally isn’t a low margin business and has enormous elasticity in terms of margins compared to the production of physical goods.
> If I develop and app, and market it myself, and already have a relationship with my customers, Apple just inserts themselves with a "product" I don't want, my users may not want, but we're forced to buy it.
Again, mainly a theoretical argument. Case in point being the many Mac apps that choose to publish on the MAS in addition to their own distribution methods.
It also completely ignores the value add provided by Apple in terms of developing and maintaining the SDKs and APIs your app depends on, not to mention the toolchain used to create said apps.
The commission is just a way of charging for those services (and defined as such in the developer agreement), other companies might instead charge per seat or, if they’re really stupid, per install.
In the gaming world they charge a hefty price per published build.
While these options might be attractive for bigger developers, it would be prohibitively costly for small indie developers, creating a significant hurdle to entry.
The problem of Apple’s revenue share structure is of course that people start forgetting what they’re actually paying for and quickly start to think they’re just paying for a glorified payment processor.
In practice the points you brought up are non-issues for most small developers, which make up the vast majority of developers on these platforms.
They do however become an issue for big developers, who now, that they’ve picked up steam, would very much like a side letter and try to rile up the smaller indie developers to fight for their cause.
It's their hubris that lead to this. For some reasons companies always seem to believe that they have an upper hand over even the most powerful governmental structure.
The very powerful people at the helm of Apple, Google and friends seem to forget that on the other side of the table there are powerful people as well and that those are quite similar to themselves.
I believe a large contributing factors were the public appearances (or lack thereof) of Tech Execs in front of government bodies (think Zuckerberg in the Senate) where it became clear that they think themselves above the rules of mere mortal man.
They committed the capital offence publicly "ridiculing" powerful politicians (and by proxy the people who elected them) all over the world and that is something that won't fly in the long term.
Come on Mark, suck in your ego, grovel a bit and agree to some semi-token compromises to keep the money train going.
And for the love of god spend some real money in Europe and pay your taxes if you want political leverage.
Apparently that was too much of an ask and now that the eyes of the public and regulators are on Big Tech they will be taken down a notch to "just" being profitable companies.
Do you realize how it sounds to compare the power of a private corporation that sells phones and computers to government agencies that wield the power of literal violence?
Do you honestly think that the incentives are that simple? Personally, I find that private companies provide me with way better, faster and more efficient services and benefits than any government agency ever has. But maybe that’s just the experience in the US.
How many of these governmental bodies look after the best interests of their citizens?
For example:
This year when I was traveling in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, most everyone I talked to (surprisingly) wanted big governmental changes there and would welcome a governmental collapse. The two main concerns were high theft rate of valuables and phones as well as politicians campaigning with big promises and then doing nothing but playing on their phones and getting paid for it. There was no accountability in government.
From my own perspective, Ecuador needs foreign intervention and foreign security to help to at least keep mayors and presidential candidates from getting regularly assassinated because the way it’s going there, it looks like a collapse is probable. Ecuador’s government was one case of a government body not performing in the best interests of its citizens.
Ecaudor's current government is fully supported by the current U.S. administration as they are leftists that lick Washington's boots while making all the right noises to secure support.
“Ecuador has emerged as a model in Latin America and the Caribbean for its ongoing efforts to strengthen democratic governance and human rights,” Senator Bob Menendez,
"We admire the strong voice for democracy that you have shared with the Ecuadorian people, but also for people throughout our hemisphere”, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his visit to Ecuador in October last year.
“You and I are united not only in our values but in our vision of the future, one that’s both free and democratic”, President Joe Biden said after meeting the Ecuadorian president in December.
'Foreign' aka U.S. intervention will only happen if Lasso pisses off Washington - like Libya's Gadaffi did. But he knows whose feet to keep massaging to stay in power. Doesn't matter how many mayors or candidates get assassinated as long as he hops to Washington D.C.
I think this apply to most leftist governments in Latin America and I believe this is a deliberate posture from Washington.
Using Brazil as a example: Lula government is doing an economic collapse and authoritarian slide speed-run while supporting Russia, China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. By all means Lula government don't align with US values and its actions goes against US interests. But at the end of the day it doesn't support Trump and share a similar "democratic/progressive" narrative.
I mean, the original intention was that developers would just write web apps for the phone. It seems like they really scrambled at the beginning to right the ship. That being said, it’s been 14 years.
If they had invested in better dev relations and dropped their 30% take (instead of coming up with all the weird ways you have to qualify for lower rates, which don't cover all scenarios), I don't think there would have been enough noise from below on this.