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Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

The membership fee is $99/yr. That's the equivalent of $330/yr in App Store sales per developer.

The opportunity cost of having developers NOT sign up because of the fee seems negligible. People still come flocking to Apple because they think they need to build an iOS app (and because of Apple's lackluster adoption of progressive web app support, that's still the only good way to get iOS users on board).

EDIT: Also, as others have mentioned, having a lower or zero fee would lower the bar, potentially flooding the App Store with even more low quality apps.

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How did you jump from $99/year to $330/yr in sales per developer?

With Apple's tax, a developer needs to sell that much a year to break even on the membership fee.

That's what I thought but wouldn't that be $165?

How did you end up at $165? That's $99 / 0.6, not $99 / 03. Apple's "tax" is 30%, isn't it?

$165 is your breakeven point where your profits after "tax" are equal to the annual fee, at which point you are in the black and making a profit on incremental sales.

Oh wait that was dumb, the 30% tax means the breakeven point is $141.43.

Also it seems possible now that the GP was speaking from Apple's perspective, not the developer's.

Oh wait, you're the GP. Sorry, I was confused about the point of the discussion.

Wouldn't that be less? Apple gets the 30%, the devs get 70% so they'd have to sell less than $330 to break even.

It's about Apple, not the developer.

For Apple to make $99 of your sales (not accounting for taxes etc), you'd need to generate a volume of sales of which 30% would amount to $99, i.e. $99 / 0.3 = $330.

If you're asking "how much does a developer need to make in sales every year to recoup their membership fee" that's different: $99 / 0.7 ≈ $142 (rounded up). But that's kinda orthogonal to Apple's interests.

He's talking about revenue for Apple. Apple takes a 30% cut. 30% of $330 = $99.

I think it means that 30% of 330/yr , Apple would lose revenue unless each developer did that per year.

99 / 0.3 = 330

It's what a developer would need to create in sales for Apple to make 99 bucks from their 30% cut.

$99/(1-.3) = $141.43

$99 your cut used to cover the program fee

$42.42 Apple’s cut

The ratio of the two is almost exactly 70:30

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