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Comment by andreasley | Hacker News Reader

A Statement of Tim Cook for the House of Representatives claimed that "For the vast majority of apps on the App Store , developers keep 100% of the money they make." [1]

How can this be even remotely true if Apple takes a 30% commission for every sale in the App Store?

[1] https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG...

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Its wily political speak. The devs keep 100% of what they make. What do they make? 70% of the price on app store.

They keep 100% of the 70% of the store price. Truthful statement, just one that is designed to mislead you.

This. Plus: most apps don’t make money. It’s easy to keep 100% of zero.

They also keep 100% of what they make after refunds have been processed and yet another cut is taken.

The idea that they could make less than 100% of the money that they "make" under these terms reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Bill Gates "buys out" Homer's fake business Hyperglobalmeganet.

He's referring to the fact that most commerce on the App Store is for physical goods and services (Airbnb, Amazon, Uber, food delivery, etc). Apple doesn't take a cut of those transactions.

They do if your service is subscription based.

Yeah, they also don't take a cut of the regular day job salary of an app developer who writes an app on the side, or his inheritance from his mother, or his niece's dog.

Two options:

1) Free apps with advertisements. Paid apps are by far the minority.

2) I guess this statement is related to subscription models like spotify. If you acquire the user outside of the apple ecosystem and they subscribe on your own website and then download your free app from the app store, you get to keep 100% on the revenue that the user generates as well.

Ah, the ad thing makes sense. It's technically true but the meaning conveyed in the statement is quite different.

As for the subscription model, I've thought about that but developers that aren't huge companies have a hard time NOT integrating in-app purchases for cloud services (see "Hey", which had to use social media to get their update approved [1]), so it couldn't be the "vast majority of apps".

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/18/21296180/apple-hey-email-...

A statement from the IRS - "For the vast majority of Americans, taxpayers keep 100% of their after-tax income"

lol

Apple doesn’t take a cut from advertising, which funds the vast majority of apps.

That’s true, and makes a weird incentive for advertisements. Ads revenue is apple-tax free

No, you just aren't seeing the 'tax' the same way. Google (and Facebook, and admob, etc) all take a cut of ad revenue, and it's even higher than 30% - in some cases much much higher.

[1] https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en

Apple doesn't take a cut of your advertising revenue, and most apps are ad-supported rather than paid.

That's why it's true.

No most apps aren’t ad supported mostly games are. The ad supported apps are not real business but side hustles or one time, one hit apps that die quickly.

Most apps by app title, not by usage.

It's precisely the long tail of side hustles with ads that make up most apps.

Perhaps he means that they keep 100% of their 70% ;)

It's up to interpretation.

Tim Cook is saying developers keep 100% of their cut of the sale.

And it sounds like you interpret Cook's statement to mean developers keep 100% of the entire sale.

He’s probably saying these are free apps which Apple doesn’t take any money for, and the money the developers keep are from ads or fees from clients and so on.

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