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Comment by stephc_int13 | Hacker News Reader

It could be even worse, when those things are left unchecked they tend to increase over time.

I've seen that with Handango (they raised from 30% to 40% and then 50%) and they went bankrupt when the App Store launched.

Same story with the phone operators, their margins was in the 50% range.

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I'll echo this: 30% is terrible, till you consider the alternatives. Before the app store it was 3 month lead times via a broker to hopefully get in front of a carrier rep who would usually go "meh" and send you packing. If they liked it, they'd take (if you were lucky) 50% with holds of up to 3 months on payouts.

Can't say I'm a huge fan of the 30% haircut, but I get to push my product directly to millions of people in a week and get paid monthly? What a time to be alive.

Before switching to a smartphone I used a J2ME Twitter client on my Sony Ericsson. You paid through PayPal and downloaded and installed a JAR file manually. It wasn't very convenient, but at least direct sales were an option. It was similar on the Palm and Symbian side of things.

Apple not allowing side-loading seems like the main issue.

> 30% is terrible, till you consider the alternatives

Only in the Apple iOS land. If I don't like Google Play's revenue cut, I can list my app on any of a dozen or so alternative stores (Amazon, F-Droid etc) and all Android Users can install my app. Same story on Windows, Linux and even Mac devices.

"all Android Users". IS it possible to get these alternative stores without rooting?

Yes. You’ll get a whole bunch of scary warning messages from the operating system warning you not to do it, but to my knowledge all android phones allow you to. It’s possible that some corporate management software might prevent this, not sure. Also there are more and more android APIs which are baked into Google Play Services, which is another can of worms entirely. Still, Android is significantly more open to sideloading than iOS.

Yes it is just another app.

See how that works out in practice.....

That works very well for services where the app is not the main product... Like Hey.com. They do their own market and don't need the "visibility" of the app store.

They would be pretty happy if they could have a link on their site to download the iOS apps, for their customers.

If Apple still wants to review every app that can be installed, they could propose an option to be in the App Store but unlisted - then the fees goes down to 2 or 3%, just like a credit card fee. But they won't, because they can get away with shaking businesses 30% so they'll keep doing it until someone forces them to stop.

There are no alternatives today.

And I am perfectly aware that the situation was even worse before the App Store.

In fact, by all means, Apple created a viable ecosystem for a huge number of independant developers and that's great.

Still, 30% is not justified, and this is not Apple hate, Google and Valve are on the same boat.

Don't forget about retailers, supermarkets, ecommerce sites etc.

If you are shocked that companies take a fee for distribution then wait until you see how things work in the real world.

> If you are shocked that companies take a fee for distribution then wait until you see how things work in the real world.

That is not a good analogy. Supermarkets, retailers etc charge a fee from the vendor because that is their primary source of income ("bread and butter", if you may). In the OP's case, the "supermarket" is an iPhone device which the user has already paid a premium price for.

EDIT: bduerst covered this already https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571076

So a company is only allowed to have one revenue source?

Grocery stores also have slotting fees.

Depends on how you define "allowed". EA was "allowed" to charge extra money for unlocking key Star Wars characters even after you paid in full for Battlefront II. So, the idea is less about what is "allowed", but rather where the line is drawn between justified commercial profit and monopolistic/bad behavior*

> Grocery stores also have slotting fees.

Again, the whole point I'm trying to make here is that comparison to grocery stores just doesn't work (because of reasons mentioned in the first comment)

* English is not my first language so I'm having trouble finding the perfect word.

Proportionally to the revenue, the cost of running a supermarket is much higher than running the App Store.

Having stock costs money, you have to decide what to stock and take a loss if you can't sell it, nothing is automated so you need more staff...

It's really apple to oranges.

100 years ago, diabetes was a terminal illness. Gouging prices on insulin is still a dick move.

You can distribute Android software without Google, and you can distribute PC games without Valve. You have a choice.

You don't have a choice to distribute iPhone software.

> You don't have a choice to distribute iPhone software.

Just broaden the market to software in general or even just software for mobile phones and tablets. Then you have a choice again. iOS's market share is below 50% even in the US, and much lower globally.

(I have both iOS and Android devices, and I specifically like that Android's Firefox allows add-ons like uBlock Origin. Apples doesn't allow those.)

Agree with the app store being better than anything that preceded it. That said, it's not 2008 anymore and Apple should adapt.

What happens in reality is developers either capitulate and / or sneakily separately contact their users and get them to pay through another payment processor.

I don’t get why either case 30% or 50% is right? It’s actually having the best app ecosystem that sells more phones, imagine for a second there was no App Store, how many iPhones would be sold.

> It could be even worse, when those things are left unchecked they tend to increase over time.

App Store has been around for over a decade.

The percentage has actually decreased.

When? Source?

In 2016, Apple reduced subscriptions to 15%.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-changes-app-store-r...

And nearly every app pivoted from a buy it once model to a pay monthly/annually model. Absolutely made the state of iOS apps worse for end-users :-(

It pivoted because there isn’t a way to do upgrade pricing.

That's not a reduced margin on IAP, that's a different serrice with a different model, and 15% is only after a (quite high) threshold.

Very few mobiles games can be sold using the subscription model.

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