| It is for processing payments, and for doing it in such a way that users are comfortable making payments. It's for curating the marketplace and designing the OS to safeguard information, so that users can trust the apps they install. It is for developing the features that serve as the backbone of the apps that developers create---cloud storage, augmented reality, machine learning, high performance graphics, cryptography, peer-to-peer networking. Of course we can imagine different business models. This one certainly has negative tradeoffs. But I think developers get a great deal for the 30% tax, and the formula has undeniably been successful in producing a marketplace where users are more comfortable spending money---the App Store has nearly double the revenue of Google Play, with a fifth the market share. (To me, the $99 developer fee seems more to do with anti-fraud than anything. With that you get two professional technical support incidents, almost guaranteed to cost Apple more than $99 in wages.) Clearly, though, Apple's rules incentivized developers to handle payments outside the App Store, and now they're upset that they've created a situation where they're getting a 0% cut. And undoubtedly it hurts the user experience when you can't sign up on-device. |