[sneak]

Even the normal 3% overhead for credit card payment flow charged without these monopolistic practices isn’t reasonable. Even 0.1% allows the bloodsucking rentseekers a gigantic margin, as their marginal costs are approximately ZERO.

15% is pure “you have no other options” robbery, expanding on the same thing pioneered by Visa/MC/AmEx.

All of the expenses you listed are a) trivial and b) already paid for by iPhone purchasers. Apple is a hardware company with the highest margins in the industry.

They’re double dipping, and gouging whilst they do so.

The storage and bandwidth costs of the App Store are the size of a rounding error at this scale. Furthermore, the App Store is a marketing tool and value add for the iPhone, and benefits them directly. To expect app developers to pay for it is insane.