[the_common_man]

This is...insane. The whole point of the App Store is to help in discovery and I already pay a 30% cut for my app. And now they want to charge me for promoting my app in their store. This should just be a built-in part of the App Store story for the customers. This is why Apple customers pay a premium. Instead Apple sees an opportunity here to make even more money off me / the app authors?

Hats off to Apple. First, they charge developers to even develop for their platform (though this has become free off late). They only allow developing on their Macs. Then they take 30% cut of apps and also in-app purchases. And now they want more money to promote stuff in their store. I don't know what to say. I am sure this will be a raging success as well :/

[HSO]

> The whole point of the App Store is to help in discovery and I already pay a 30% cut for my app.

Actually, the point of the app store was distribution. That's what the 30% cut was for IIRC. And that's how they sold it, by comparing it to the 50% and more cut that older, traditional channels took at the time of introduction. I don't think they ever even thought about discovery, which would explain why the app store has become such a mess in the first place!

> And now they want to charge me for promoting my app in their store. This should just be a built-in part of the App Store story for the customers. This is why Apple customers pay a premium. Instead Apple sees an opportunity here to make even more money off me / the app authors?

I don't think making money is the main consideration for Apple here. Advertising can also play a useful role as a market mechanism (keyword: "price discovery"). For example, if you spend money to promote your app, you signal confidence in its value proposition. Also, you might be more selective in your targeting. Etc. So the money itself is almost incidental, what we really want here is the information aggregation and surfacing function of a competitive market, the most efficient matching of offers (app makers) and bidders (app users) across an extremely heterogeneous collection of agents.

But it needs to be set up correctly (this is what all the mechanism design literature is all about). Hopefully it is, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

[the_common_man]

From https://developer.apple.com/app-store/

"The App Store makes it simple for users around the world to discover, download and enjoy your apps. "

Discovery is very much part of the deal.

[yankyou]

> Actually, the point of the app store was distribution. That's what the 30% cut was for IIRC.

Nobody was paying Apple 30% because that was cheaper than distributing yourself. They paid 30% because without paying that their app wouldn't get discovered, by design.

Now Apple has decided 30% only buys you the privilege of being able to pay more to be discovered.

[duaneb]

I suppose you can't discover that which doesn't exist, but it sounds more like you're shorhorning an argument that doesn't fit. The App Store is a piece of shit for finding apps and this will only help that experience. You're free to advertise anywhere; users can still search for you exact app name, same as they always could.

[georgeecollins]

What distributor of software ever charged 50%? Retailers of CD-ROM games (when they were a thing) and video games do not charge that kind of markup.

You are crazy if you think this is a way for Apple to do anything other than capture some of the existing market of app ads, which has been incredibly lucrative for Facebook. They have so many ways to get more information about how useful an app is likely to be for you that they don't use, they don't need another signal.

[HSO]

> Retailers of CD-ROM games (when they were a thing) and video games do not charge that kind of markup.

Maybe not anymore but the app store was launched in 2008. If you look at the percentage a writer or a band makes from a physical book resp. studio album, 50% actually looks very optimistic. Don't forget, there were multiple layers involved, including shipping, wholesalers, retailers, etc. and everybody wanted a cut. There's a reason desktop software to this day has a much higher price anchor than mobile!

[georgeecollins]

2008? I started making retail software in 1995 and believe me in those days stores often only took 10 - 20% of the retail price for CD-ROMs because they drove buyers into the store.

My point was that "distributors" or retailers never took 50% as the original post suggested.

If you believe that the reason desktop software has a higher anchor price point than mobile is the multiple layers, please explain why the price point on the Steam store is so much higher than the app store.

[r00fus]

But did retail press your disks and prepare your packaging? Did they provide analytics?

Your Steam analogy is flawed due to selection bias - Steam is about games, and games are more similar to movies than apps. People want entertaining content (and a good amount) for that initial price.

Does Steam allow for freemium? What about ad-driven games?

[nl]

The old "app stores" run by carriers before the iPhone charged way more than 50%. From memory the best deal I ever heard anyone getting was when they charged 70%.

[coev]

> What distributor of software ever charged 50%? Retailers of CD-ROM games (when they were a thing) and video games do not charge that kind of markup.

The mobile carriers often charged upwards of that rate to game publishers.

[eridius]

It is a built-in part of the App Store. But the app store is so crowded that once you fall off the front page, there's not much you can do within the store (besides hope that Apple decides to feature you after some big update). The reason why search ads are actually good for customers is because it promotes apps that are backed by companies that a) still care about their app, and b) can afford to actually promote the app. This means the app is much more likely to be under active development and to be usable in the future. And surely any company that's interested in search ads is already purchasing ads on web search engines and whatnot, so it really shouldn't be a big deal.

[the_common_man]

This is poor logic. Promoting has nothing to do with how well supported the app is. All we will see is people with money push their apps and trying to make up for that money at the cost of the customer.

[joemi]

> Promoting has nothing to do with how well supported the app is.

I think it could, to a certain extent. If someone stops supporting an app, I think there's a decent chance they wouldn't both paying money to promote it. At least for the kind of throw-away crap apps that are out there.

[Kronopath]

People are already paying to promote apps though. I've heard of plenty of app developers paying for huge numbers of app installs in bulk in order to get them to the App Store's top downloaded lists. This is Apple trying to capture some of that market and bring it away from these kinds of shady practices.

[the_common_man]

Yes, so let it be free of charge. Why is there any cost involved here for the app developer?

[zbuttram]

So instead of ads you want a system where random relevant apps are floated to the top of searches? How is that helpful for anyone?

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like Apple is only doing what every other search system with embedded ads at the top does.

[the_common_man]

So you are saying Google search is useful only because of ads?

[notatoad]

for many search terms, and in my opinion, yes. a typical use case on an app store is searching for something like the example given on apple's promo page here: "photo filters". neither the app store or google has enough intelligence to make a decision about what the best result is, given a query that vague and returning that many results. the most useful thing they can actually display is likely an ad.

try searching for something like "car insurance" on google with adblock turned off - the majority of the visible page area will be used by some sort of ad unit, and the native results are pretty useless.

[joemi]

If it were free, wouldn't everyone do it, thereby negating any benefit?

[ljk]

Probably because Apple can..

[ivv]

That's how supermarkets work, too. They get a cut of the sales price, and if you want your product to stand out, you pay for a more prominent placement.

[the_common_man]

Well, exactly. That is what is terrible about this. The goal of App Store must be to help the user find the best product that is suited based on the search. It's purpose must be to delight it's users. The users and app authors are already paying Apple in many ways. So instead of seeing this an algorithm/engineering problem, Apple has now turned it's Store into some super market. The goal of a supermarket is hardly to "delight" you. And neither do they have your best interests in mind. When/what is last delightful supermarket you went to?

[dismantlethesun]

This presupposes that goods aren't fungible.

In supermarkets, they are. To most consumers, one brand of milk might as well be another brand--even if the tastes is different, it's slight enough to be negligible. So just shelving everything as 'milk' is good enough for the supermarket to handle is distribution duty. Now if one particular brand wants to do better than its competitor, it can pay for placement closer to the checkout section, or pay for a big promotional area for it.

The same might be true with apps. Yes apps have differences, but its not really clear that such differences are enough that there is clearly one app better suited for a purpose than another. Nor is it clear that you can both (a) divine the suitability of any app and (b) match that up with a consumer with any degree of accuracy versus alternatives.

If the above were true, central planning via the app store would be great. Since it's not... well our best known solution is capitalist market action which opening up the store to advertisement allows.

[erikpukinskis]

Supermarkets are probably one of the least usable markets in existence though. It's almost impossible to go into a supermarket without an understanding of what you need and leave better off. You have to go in with expert knowledge of everything you need. Hardly a role model for marketplace design.

[ivv]

What would be an example of a more usable market that doesn't require some level of domain expertise?

[erikpukinskis]

A bike shop.

[brian-armstrong]

Also, I think it's worth combining this news with the fact that they restricted the length of app titles in order to combat app store seo. Why not just fix search in the first place? This definitely feels like an engineering shortcoming on Apple's behalf.

[supercoder]

The whole point is not discovery. It's distribution. If you take away the app store, there's nothing to download.

Search ads give companies a legitimate way to promote apps within the app store, outside of editorial or bad tactics to game search results (title keyword stuffing, keyword highjacking etc).

The App Store is where the customers are, so it makes sense to allow advertising here. Otherwise the alternative Google or Facebook where you're changes of conversion are such a great deal less because you're so far removed from the channel.

It's like the difference between being offered fries at the fast food counter compared to a banner ad. It's clear it's going to be better for all involved to be offered something in the better context.

[aikah]

> The App Store is where the customers are

iOS customers don't have the choice but to go get their apps on the appstore. Saying that is redundant.

[awesomerobot]

Pretty sure it isn't just about discovery considering you couldn't have an app on an iPhone without Apple. This is just an inevitability of a walled ecosystem.

[WesleyJohnson]

> First, they charge developers to even develop for their platform (though this has become free off late).

How has it become free? Honest question, as I'm not sure what you're referring to.

[the_common_man]

I meant the 99usd fee really per annum. It's only free if you are not publishing on the store. AFAIK, this was not free previously.

[madeofpalk]

It was always free to develop. You needed an paid developer account in order to sign apps to adhoc install it on your phone to test it. This is now free.

Still need a paid developer account in order to publish to the App Store.