Does Amazon provide value with the Kindle? Does Valve with Steam? Amazon market place? eBay? The console makers?
The theaters don’t bring too much value as evidenced by them holding on by tooth and nail trying to convince the studios not to go straight to digital.
Roku is infamous for not allowing content distributors (except for Netflix) to be on it unless they get a cut.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/roku-plans-to-block-fox-apps-da...
Hey is free to offer subscriptions at a 43% premium through the App Store and still get its full amount.
Steam: you can redeem keys purchased from other stores, install apps from other stores, and they don’t mandate using their system for in app purchases
eBay: do they have any policies like this? I haven’t heard much about them or made an eBat purchase in a decade.
Amazon Marketplace: There actually is a strong argument here that they capture so much of the market that opting out is not an option. This is very similar and already under much scrutiny.
Game Console: Also very similar to this. I expect they will lobby hard on Apples side for that reason.
Apple participates in Movies Anywhere Sling with Amazon, Google, Vudu, and a few other vendors. If you buy a movie from any of the participating studios, you get credit for purchasing for all of the stores.
You can also purchase physical movies from other places and redeem codes to get credit as if you purchased them from iTunes.
Apple doesn’t require that you must only use their subscriptions. You can subscribe outside of the store. You can every charge more subscriptions to make up for their 30%.
Of course you can opt out of Marketplace. You can set up your own website with places like Shopify.