The 30% fee robbery is the reason I quit app development, im actually happy I ended up in SaaS business, so thank you Apple
I'd be more than happy for it to be 0%, but you do get a few things for that cut:
* Credit card processing
* Handling refunds (you need to do this manually on refund, just another thing to deal with)
* Some level of app discovery
* Distribution of app and files
My biggest problem with the 30% is that it is now the de-facto amount that other similar services charge developers for everything now (Google Play - there are others too that escape me now).
Amazon charges 15% for most things. eBay is 9%. Etsy is 3.5%.
Software house commission is definitely on the high side. Interesting that Steam, Apple, and Google are all at the same rough figure.
Turns out, they have several other fees on top. So it's not only 3.5%, it's actually $2.4 a year per item. Add to that the credit card fees of minimum 3-4.4% + $0.25 per sale. On top of this, you need to add the shipping fees, currency conversion fees and each platform have their own particular setup.
This all goes to show that you can't just randomly pick fees out like that. The total cost to the user needs to be considered.