I thought Apple was the originator of the 30% cut for app stores, and everybody else followed suit?
People forget that there were phones before the iPhone decided all phones would be rectangles with touchscreens.
Those phones ran apps and games, and you downloaded them from app stores... there was in fact a cambrian explosion of app stores, when you made software you had to publish it to hundreds of them.
I can't remember the %, but it seems unlikely, in the fact of all that competition that it was as high as 30%.
Many of the J2ME etc app stores prior to Apple were run by network carriers, and their cuts were considerably higher than 30% - upwards of 50%, even more for things like direct carrier billing (the app would be charged to your phone bill).
Motorola phones might have been truely “dumb”, that wasn’t true for a Casio or a Panasonic phone for instance.
I think the BREW ecosystem had some solution to set up a store of this kind that they used to supply to carriers?
Sometimes it takes an 800 lb gorilla (with fresh iPod $$$$$) to take on the other 800 lb gorillas, even if it mostly meant we spent the first 8 years or so paying ridiculous 2-year contracts for "subsidized" $700 phones.
And some how the lifetime of those phones were much longer than the iPhones, until they had to stop forcing updates which degraded performance.
(Apple's may have been the first store operated by a hardware maker rather than a carrier though.)
Apple's store isn't open to anyone.
> and that took a much bigger cut than Apple.
AFAIK Docomo (largest carrier in Japan) took 9%. Are you sure you know what you're talking about here?
I had plenty of J2ME and Symbian apps before iOS was even born.
Send SMS, get download link, done.
Use the Web store from the phone provider, done.
They even had contests for apps. I did apply to one at Vodafone when the Sharp GX20 was released, to show off the device capabilities.
https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/166989-vodafone-javatm-...
> Vodafone is pleased to annouce the Vodafone Java(tm) Games Challenge 2003 - a competition for J2ME games developers. The top three winners will receive: - A Sharp-GX20 - The new Vodafone live! handset with QVGA screen resolution - A commercial contract with Vodafone to deploy the winning games onto Vodafone live! in several countries Vodafone live! currently attracts 1.5 million customers across 13 countries. Register at www.via.vodafone.com and submit your games by August, 1st !
And while they had lots of trash, the gatekeeping kept it lower than current store offerings full of copy-cats.
It took off because it was a good experience (one stop shopping) and because of the popularity of the iPhone. And of course it doesn't hurt that it was the only App Store for iOS.