Hacker News Reader

Comment by itake | Hacker News Reader

I own a small app and iOS's free organic app search results drive 98% of my user base right now. I could see it being much more challenging to build an app if you have to develop alternative marketing channels.

Personally, alternative marketing channels have yet to work for me.

View on HN

Do you also have an android app? What I'm asking I guess is not why do you need the AppStore when you are on iOS. But more why do you have to be on iOS in the first place?

Do they have to be or want to be?

If they want access to the market then it's a "Want to be" not a "have to be" because of the opportunities apparent.

I have a react native app and it runs in both stores. The iOS users drive most of my revenue. My app could not survive without the organic search traffic from Apple.

I guess I was a bit misleading in my original comment. 98% of my users come from iOS and Android organic search results. I haven't been able to find any profitable non-store marketing channels.

iPhone users tend to buy "more" from store. Android users don't really care about apps.

It's not Apple or Google. It's users who are paying.

Checking multiple sources, Google Play store revenue was a bit over half the Apple App Store last year, so around the 8 billion mark for GPA and 14 billion for AAS.

But that’s something Apple can quantify. In your case it appears paying 30% is justifiable. Why can’t they just change it to either pro-rata or flat fee based on active install base?

Because Apple probably loses money reviewing my app and needs the bigger players to cover the costs :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com