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Comment by Grustaf | Hacker News Reader

It’s not a tax, it’s like a rent. They built and run the ecosystem, you don’t have to be part of it if you don’t like it, it’s completely voluntary, unlike a tax.

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Rent is normally flat. I've never heard of a landlord taking a percentage

It happens all the time with commercial leases.

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/clb-percentage-rent....

Absurd, and:

> The percent that’s applied is usually an industry standard (7% on every dollar) and isn’t subject to much negotiation.

Which is still much less than the 30% of Apple.

It’s not about the size of the fee, it’s about what you charge for.

It’s rent in the sense of rent seeking. You control an asset and let others pay for using it, if they want to. Rent seeking is not a very good thing but it’s a minuscule part of Apple’s business model. I also can’t see how a small developer can find it unfair, 30% for access to the best mobile ecosystem seems a pretty good deal to me, and I’m a mobile developer. I can agree that it seems expensive to Amazon or Spotify though.

I don't see it as tax or rent, but a business partnership with a revenue sharing model. Amazon has a unique deal, Google has a unique deal to bring search in Safari, Microsoft has a unique deal. Apple can't sign unique deals with all developers so this is a fair and scalable way to create business deals using APIs. It isn't perfect, but it works. If it didn't, it wouldn't be so successful.

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