Comment by seviu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seviu | Hacker News Reader

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They scared the good app developers away. That 30% means making a living out of selling apps is nearly impossible. For an indie developer it’s just dead.

A clear example is the Vision Pro. Developer relations were menacing app developers that they would regret not building for it.

One year later, half a million headsets sold, and nobody in my circle has even the slightest interest in developing apps for it. I should know because I am an iOS developer, now working for a bank, and enjoying it, but no longer pursuing the indie dream.

Crickets

Apple maximized its strategy for maximum profit extraction. They have all the rights to do it. It’s, after all, their product. And they keep on doing it by selling devices which are fully managed by them, disallowing the usage of APIs that would make their devices way more usable. All this with full disdain for app developers.

As I said, they have all their right to enforce that 30% rule and show scare banners all over the place.

But the damage is done. And the trust is lost.

> That 30% means making a living out of selling apps is nearly impossible. For an indie developer it’s just dead.

Not at all trying to defend Apple's behavior here, but that statement is not true. There are many indie devs making a living from apps. Margins in indie apps are usually very high, as in most cases the expenses are fixed - just your own salary.

> as in most cases the expenses are fixed - just your own salary.

It sounds like you are hiding costs of overhead. What about rent for your workplace (whether it is your home, a coffeehouse, or WeWork) and your utilities, especially electric power and Internet access, and your HW/SW tools, including your notebook, monitors, accessories.

Don’t hide your externalities naïvely like an Uber driver.

But it's all fixed costs. I don't see how the 30% change anything.

Say you need 100k profit after Apple's cut.

Scenario A: Apple takes a third of the App Store revenue. You need to sell in-app purchases for 150k. Scenario B: Apple takes no cut. You need to sell in-app purchases for 100k.

So the claim is, scenario B would be the dream, but scenario A is "nearly impossible"? What is fundamentally different between 100k and 150k revenue, if your expenses are fixed? This doesn't make any sense.

The comparison to Uber doesn't make any sense either, their costs aren't fixed. If they want to double their income, they must double their work.

The non indie dev companies often have fixed costs that are often proportionally lower. Apple has that and does not pay that 30% tax. The consumer always does tho. There may be more pressure to lower this if there were more alternatives to these walled gardens. For obvious reasons there's only 2.

Consider it similar to supermarkets or amazon. anticompetitive market practices and other dynamics make it so they are dominant. Now it's almost unfeasible to not sell your product in these places. They can now dictate you can not sell your product cheaper in your own store if you sell in theirs or the like. At any given time they might notice your success and decide to compete with you kick you to the curb with all advantages they can be expected to use.

> That 30% means making a living out of selling apps is nearly impossible. For an indie developer it’s just dead.

Almost all developers get charged 15%. Only the tiny minority earning more than a million dollars a year are charged 30%.

> They scared the good app developers away. That 30% means making a living out of selling apps is nearly impossible. For an indie developer it’s just dead.

This doesn't even make sense, most provably by the fact you stopped being an indie dev long before Apple was forced to drop its 30%

They don't have "all the rights" btw. We have agreed that monopolies should not have the right to exist, 100 years ago already. Building bigger and bigger moats moves us away from the "enlightened self-interest" that should be the positive motivation for capitalism.

I still think they have full right to charge an amount. Apple doesn’t hold a monopoly.

That 30% is however ridiculous. But they can raise it to 90% if they want to find out. The user is not really hurt, just the developer. Eventually they won’t have developers.

No apps, no iPhone.

Not sure what the monopolistic take is. There is a lot of alternative smartphones with way more ram and great specs, that rival the best iPhone.

I live in Europe though, and over here Android dominates the market, and people use WhatsApp for messaging. A totally different world.

>Apple doesn’t hold a monopoly.

I'd say it's fair to argue it's a duopoly

>The user is not really hurt, just the developer.

Both will likely pay part of that tax to varying degrees.

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