Because whenever I zoom out and look at more that just Google/Apple the more I see examples of this happening everywhere and I wonder why there isn't similar outrage. Like with the whole "FB mad that Apple wouldn't let them call out the 30% cut" thing, I mean Kroger isn't going to let a company print on their box "Kroger takes 30% of this sale"...
Yes.
> How about the cut stores get to put products on their shelves?
No.
A digital store has an essentially unlimited capacity and carrying a new product involves doing a review and adding a new record in a database. Kroger, on the other hand, has to do this and manage limited shelf space.
The limited resource in an app store is the slot in some promotion carousel. Go ahead and charge whatever you want for that.
Consider that the profit margin for a train line might be something like a few percent, and that's for a capital intensive industry, these companies charge 30% for what?
This is why they should regulate so that no product, where it can be reasonably applied, should have a single app store. If you want to pay more for a better service that's fine, but with no competition it's just a racket.
Apple has 50% of the entire US smart phone market.
This is a significant larger amount of market power then those other situations.