[personZ]

I would be really surprised by that. The gross 30%, presuming it always applied, would be about $6 billion per year, which would be an enormously expensive online store. Of course Apple's cut is often lower than 30% -- I can frequently buy $100 iTunes cards at Costco for $80, for instance, and then add that the retailer surely gets a cut as well.

Nonetheless, the iTunes empire is currently doing almost $20B of business a year, with a $6B cut. The NFL, in contrast -- for all its seeming enormity and influence -- is about a $8B business, gross.

[amatheus]

The app store has free apps too, it could be said the paid apps are subsidizing the free ones.

[chrischen]

Subsidizing the bandwidth costs? Because the free app developers surely don't see any of that 30% cut app charges other apps.

[ThomPete]

The apps needs to be approved. The majority of cost from running the app store is the people who work there.

[ThomPete]

I was talking about the app store. Sorry if that was unclear.