[Apocryphon]

The 15% pay cut is an industry convention, but is that actually justified by any financial reasoning? With actual competition in this space, business models can be discovered that could potentially lower costs. Not to mention, given the VC effect, there will likely be newcomers that try to undercut Apple/Google and each other with lower prices by burning investor capital, for a time.

[shimfish]

Which is another non-discussed aspect to this.

People are already upset that their digital purchases are controlled by Apple. Wait until the startup that they bought stacks of software from goes bust and all of their app purchases are gone.

[Apocryphon]

This current situation already exists with the App Store. There are apps that have been removed from the store that are simply gone forever, such as Flappy Bird, which was at least free. So how does this change anything? Just because Apple will outlive third party stores doesn't mean the situation you're describing doesn't already happen.