[megablast]

> takes a ludicrous percentage of revenue via the App Store.

Do you know what it was before the Apple App store came along? You were handing over about 70-80%, and that was if you could convince a publisher to take your app, which was a very hard sell.

Then Apple came along offering EVERYONE the ability to publish apps, and at a very reasonable cost.

[mikeash]

You could throw up a web site and an online store and sell directly for nothing close to that. If you used a full-featured sales service, you might pay 8%. If you put in the work to run your own store that works with a merchant account, you could get it down to maybe 3%.

The alternative to the App Store isn't selling through a huge publisher who takes a huge cut, it's selling directly and keeping almost all of the money.

[cyrus_]

No, then _the internet_ came along, offering EVERYONE the ability to publish apps, at an actually very reasonable cost.