[msm_]

>Well one option is Apple just closes the store, hires a couple hundred high quality developers and builds out their own library of Apps, take 100% of the revenue. No tax in that situation! But I'm not sure it's a better outcome for developers.

It's also not better for Apple, quite obviously, or they'd already do this. People want and expect their favourite apps to work on their phones.

[SilverBirch]

They don't do this right now because they get revenue from Apps built using their SDKs. If they can no longer get that revenue they may well decide they'd rather just build their own versions and get 100% of the revenue instead, and for everything else just push developers into a web view.

Hell, without the revenue they could just turn around and say "We're not going to charge a 30% fee. But you need to pay us $10m per quarter to license our SDK". There's tonnes of options that Apple can use to squeeze developers for something that genuinely is hugely valuable.

I think people lose sight of the fact that before the App Store the way applications got onto phones was far far more favourable to the hardware vendor.