To a small developer I think it’s a huge boon.
But once you become BIG (Candy Crush, Fortnight, Netflix, Amazon) that advantage no longer applies. Those companies are all capable of doing all the payment stuff on their own.
And when you’re doing Fortnight business that 30% is a TON of money.
I seems like Apple should offer a sliding scale based on transaction volume. Starts at 30% and goes down to a bit above credit card fees (say 5% or 7.5%) once you are taking in enough money.
There are still big benefits to the App Store handling payment, like centralized billing, already having card information entered, their ‘allowance’ features, etc.
That would probably help a lot of the big indie applications too.
I suppose they could let you use your own billing system for a flat fee. Say $5-10 million a year. If your volume is high enough it’s worth it you could opt out. They could use that money to ensure quality/compliance.
Unfortunately services revenue has been the one bright spot in Apple’s numbers recently. And a big cut there wouldn’t look good. So I don’t expect Apple to do anything out of charity.
The only plus is some of these groups are big enough they can push back on Apple and it would do something. Now that Fortnight is on Android, can you imagine the power they’d have over Apple if they said they were leaving the platform over this?
Some BIG properties are going to have to shun iOS and get users mad to make a real change. I have a hard time seeing that happen since iOS is just too profitable.