[rimliu]

A different look may be like this: I made an app and I gladly give away 30% (it can be less, btw) for not having to care about setting up and supporting payment, distribution and updates infrastructure, dealing with PCI and chargebacks, etc.

[throwaway13337]

You didn't get to make that choices. It was forced on you.

[rimliu]

Nobody forced me to program for iOS.

[Scarblac]

The fact that iOS and Android are the only smartphone OSes did force you to do that.

Unless you mean that you could have made a competitor, but that's inane -- that's a completely different market, with huge barrier to entry.

Apple is using its huge market position in one area (smartphone OSes) to give itself a huge advantage in another (music apps). That's the sort of thing companies have got huge fines for in the past, or were broken in parts for.

[ttoinou]

You can have alternative app store on Android there's no technical limitations, right ?

And at some point you could jailbreak iPhone and iPod Touch and crack apps but no real alternative market rose up

[radley]

Aside from setting up payment, all of those issue are still present with Apple / Google payments. The difference is 3% (MC, Stripe, Visa) vs 30% (Apple, Google). That 27% can easily cover those issues and far, far more.

In fact, it's worse. Payment & fraud disputes are also bound to the marketplace. What are the chances that app devs will end up being the ones eating big losses just to continue to exist?