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> I don't remember where I read this but someone mentioned that the judge asked Apple why they charge 30%, which I found to be a bit of a strange thing to ask (and probably a bit of a softball). Why not 30%? Why not 40%? Why do companies have margins that they set that the market will bear at all? Etc.

Presumably, if they’d said “because that’s what Google is/was charging”, it could be pursued as price fixing.

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> Presumably, if they’d said “because that’s what Google is/was charging”, it could be pursued as price fixing.

That's not price fixing if they make the decision to match Google on their own, rather than in concert with Google.

If Apple chose to match the existing industry standard percentage but has not fixed any prices, is that price-fixing?

Not without coordination with other vendors, no.

The number probably came from looking at what brick and mortar stores do. Typically stores "mark up" products by 40% from their distributors. And if you think about it, that's effectively what Apple does, but in this case, the distributor (aka app developer) has to "mark-up" the price to cover the cost incurred by selling in the app store. In general this practice is pretty common in retail.

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