[_delirium]

Possibly even good for consumers in that case. It's not really an ideal situation that software distribution would be a high-margin business in the first place. Typically you want distribution and infrastructure businesses to be competitive spaces with prices driven down towards costs, since they're just overhead from the perspective of getting stuff from sellers to buyers. For example, container shipping and grocery stores are not high-margin businesses.

On the other hand, Microsoft's new 20-30% cut doesn't sound like very low-margin distribution infrastructure either...

[Goronmon]

It's not really an ideal situation that software distribution would be a high-margin business in the first place. Typically you want distribution and infrastructure businesses to be competitive spaces with prices driven down towards costs, since they're just overhead from the perspective of getting stuff from sellers to buyers.

Does "low-margin" for software really make sense? These aren't physical goods that have a inherent value. The "cost" of any given piece of software is the price you are willing to pay the people building it.

[_delirium]

I was thinking just of margins on the distribution part, not the creation of software. Getting an app from the creator to the purchaser seems like a logistics/retail type business, like Wal-Mart is for physical goods, and high margins on that just means more overhead for everyone (except the operator of the distribution network).