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I'm not in favour of governments setting prices, because it's not flexible enough, it's costly for tax payers, and it creates incentives for lobbying (or bribing) the regulator instead of becoming more productive and offering a better service.

What governments should do is make sure that markets work. The global app store duopoly with it's uniform 30% revenue cut is an egregious example of a dysfunctional market that allows rent seeking and absuse of power.

App stores should compete based on their own merit. OS platforms should be forced to offer a range of competing app stores with equal visibility. Then we'll see how much customers actually value Apple's app store.

[zepto]

If you want to destroy the profitability of smaller developers, this is exactly the strategy to adopt.

If you think that dealing with one set of App Store policies designed to benefit the store owner is a problem, how does having to deal with multiple stores with different rules solve that problem?

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I am a small developer and I would very much welcome more competition between app stores.

I'll happily read the policies if that gives me a choice to not agree to everything and anything a global duopoly of digital overlords demands.

The imbalance of power in this broken market is stacked against us small developers in the most dystopian fashion imaginable.

[zepto]

Read the policies?

And maintain different versions to comply with the different stores requirements?

Upload in different ways to each store?

Deal with different liabilities that the stores allow to pass through to you?

Respond to bad reviews through all the different stores interfaces?

And for what? What percentage saving do you expect to see? Other stores will not be free.

Deal with when one of the stores gives your app away for free as part of a promotion that you agreed to without realizing it in the small print somewhere?

I don’t disagree that the current situation is bad for independent developers.

But competing stores will only makes that vastly worse.

I’d like to see people actually say what a competing store would do better to help indies.

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>And for what? What percentage saving do you expect to see?

I would expect roughly 10% to 15% revenue cut, far more favourable terms, less bullying, less paternalistic content restrictions and above all the option to say no to any individual app store that makes egregious demands.

They have us by the throat. One mistake and you're out. You can be banned for life without recourse. Your career may be over, your skills worthless.

This is completely unacceptable.

[zepto]

Ok - so assume a store opens with a 10% revenue cut, and ends up with 50% of sales.

You still have to support the Apple store otherwise you lose half your sales.

The effective commission is now 20%. So you pay 10% less commission but must deal with 2 stores.

That’s with just a single additional store taking 50% of the business, which is an unlikely scenario.

Consider that it is inevitable that new stores will not all be independent.

Google and Amazon will immediately open stores if Apple is forced to allow 3rd party stores.

Will their cut be lower than 30%? I see no reason for it to be. Google play is 30% right now. Maybe it will be 25%, but they have no reason to minimize the commission.

Will they get significant traffic? Yes - they both have the ability to push their stores via their giant advertising platforms. They will also use the opportunity to push browser based platforms that they control, and which will further fragment the user experience.

Why would they need to dramatically improve terms for developers?

Neither has any record of doing so.

Would they allow all kinds of App? No. They don’t right now. Why would they in future?

So you’re going to have to deal with all 3 of the big stores.

Now assume some independent stores get funded which actually do offer better terms for developers.

What percentage of the market will they realistically get?

And how can you benefit from their ‘less egregious demands‘?

If you want the percentage of revenue from the Apple store or from the Play or Amazon stores, you will have to meet their demands.

Therefore you will either make a lowest common denominator version that complies with the restrictions of all stores, or you will need to maintain multiple versions.

Requiring Apple to allow multiple stores will be more expensive and more restrictive and force developers to deal with even more rules.

It is in no way good for indie developers.

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>Will their cut be lower than 30%? I see no reason for it to be. Google play is 30% right now

Yes, I'm sure of it. For instance, Microsoft's fees are just 15% because they are less powerful right now. The more stores there are, the less powerful each of them would be and that would create an incentive for all of them, including the incumbants, to cut fees and offer fairer terms.

We might well see new entrants beyond Google and Amazon - people like Microsoft, Stripe, Puddle, Shopify, Valve, Facebook or startups that don't exist yet. Maybe the content side and the payment/billing side of stores would be run by different companies. Who knows.

As soon as you have credible alternative stores with equal visibility, the most profitable customers will leave the incumbants if they don't relent on fees. Small developers will be able to tag along, because everything else would be seen as obviously unfair.

If you claim that the balance of supply and demand has absolutely no bearing on prices and terms, then I will never be able to convince you. But you're going against every single historical example of how markets work.