Electricity and processing power aren't that expensive.
They'd probably do just fine if they'd lower the fee to 10%, and stop enforcing that you don't have third-party payments.
Especially considering they're a) charging a yearly fee and b) selling ads on the AppStore (which as someone else here pointed out is their aim to grow ad sales by clamping down on the ad identifier to make ads outside of the AppStore less useful).
Off the top of my head:
- Non-free apps sold on the app store take a 20% cut, up to a max of a $5 fee. (This would be a bit of encouragement for developers to price productivity apps higher than $25; the "race to the bottom" in app pricing has been a deterrent for some classes of apps, in my understanding.)
- In-app purchases and subscriptions take a 15% cut, with a drop to 10% for subscriptions in their second year and beyond.
- Links to external web payment forms are allowed (with no Apple cut or penalty) in apps that are clients for cross-platform services, e.g., Netflix, Kindle, and so on.
There'd be a lot of details and nuance to work out with respect to those last two, but it doesn't seem like it'd be an impossible hurdle to figure out where to draw those lines.
And don't get me wrong, I think Apple is a great company. But they are sitting in a monopoly today. Maybe some folks here are too young to remember but companies like microsoft got punished in the past for having too much control over people' choices and, in my opinion, it was way softer comparing to what Apple is doing today.
I remember Steve Jobs saying (about not allowing adult-themed apps) that iOS was "freedom from porn!"[1], which to me sounded more like "freedom from choice!"
1 (yeah, ok, like Safari does't do pornsites?)
The whole selling point of the App Store payments was supposed to have been convenience, so, however much they charge, is supposed to be worth it on its own for the indie players.
What do we get instead? Instead, Apple doesn't allow their useds to buy books from Amazon.
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My personal opinion is that it must be required that Apple payments are accepted within the app, and that the app makers aren't allowed to pump and dump promotions for tricking users into adding credit card details by providing temporary benefits (e.g., Apple price cannot be more than however much Apple charges in commissions), otherwise, there should not be any restrictions about two consenting parties from making a transaction however they feel like. (Cannot sell to the end users the idea that a 30% "convenience" fee is reasonable? Well, maybe it's not that reasonable, after all?!)
Likewise, there should be an advanced-user setting (similar to Android) for installing any app from any source. This setting isn't used very often in Android at all, but it's something very basic to ensure the competition on the platform, and that the manufacturer would never be able to preclude me from consenting to a transaction that I'd like to consent to.
Surely you don't do "cost plus" pricing for your own services.
You do value based pricing for your services. I'd bet that you don't think at all about the electricity and processing costs that it takes to do what you do.
Apple is no different.
If the app store were really so incredibly great for app developers then Apple should have no trouble allowing alternate app stores.
Well, and building a product and ecosystem nearly from scratch that arguably started an industry that’s now around half a trillion dollars a year.