Which, in the days before the Apple App Store, when one had to contact Verizon or AT&T to get your app available to cell phones, was the other way around. They would take 70%, and give you 30%.
How quickly people forget this. It went quickly from Apple is changing the game, and giving developers an unprecedented cut of the sale of their apps. And for their 30% they host it, they process the credit cards, they provide the iCloud infrastructure and notifications for free, they make it searchable in their store. No one said it wasn't a good deal.
But a few years pass, and now it's the Apple Tax? Some people could promote and sell it themselves for less. A lot less? Maybe, maybe not. But most of us could never ever do it for the 30%. Why does everyone think they're the smartest one in the room these days? Odds are, you're really not. Sorry. You're just not.
Well appstore is a walled monopoly and has pretty awful discovery. There's a huge tail and only the top 10 really make it.
They are using their monopolistic stance to kill others. But then it's their platform and they can do as they please. They gotta make the $$$ to keep shareholders happy with ever expanding profits.
Getting approved was also a months long process that required a substantial upfront investment in bizdev, legal, and custom engineering. And you had to do this for every single carrier, which was extra fun internationally.
This is true, and it's also why apps hardly existed in those days. But really it just shows that the market has moved from having the mobile companies as rent-takers to Apple as a slightly more generous rent-taker. Neither the 70% nor 30% is really the product of a market process.
The counter-argument is of course the PC era, where you could sell stuff and give 0% to the manufacturer and OS vendor.
But a few years pass, and now it's the Apple Tax? Some people could promote and sell it themselves for less. A lot less? Maybe, maybe not. But most of us could never ever do it for the 30%. Why does everyone think they're the smartest one in the room these days? Odds are, you're really not. Sorry. You're just not.