Tone can be hard to judge, so you should append the /s tag to make it clear you're joking, otherwise people are going to assume you mean it.
In the end, a lot of Apple customers would never have bought an iPhone if it couldn't run their essential apps (like Whatsapp, Spotify, Youtube, etc).
You strategy played out very well in pre 2008 days with Windows Mobile. It also played out very well for Microsoft paying developers to create apps for Windows Phone, before Microsoft admitted defeat and left the phone market they were in since 1996.
About the 15%.
Have you tried running a business to make a living?
Have you tried building something yourself?
Have you tried selling it in 155 countries?
Have you tried getting access to a market of 1+ billion people?
Have you tried monitoring you don't breach regulations and tax thresholds in 155 countries?
Have you tried registering for VAT MOSS in one of the EU countries?
Have you tried implementing IP geo-location for your European customers, to charge a correct VAT amount out of 27 options?
Just because you can create a store with Shopify, or build a website with Wix, doesn't mean you get access to a marketplace with billion people in it.
There's a reason why sellers want to be on Amazon, even when they have their own Shopify shops.
> about the 15%
Yeah, about that. As it is, it’s monopoly rent (and before you bring up consoles - yes, there too). Nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I wouldn’t be happy with 5% or 1% either, because the point is not how you measure the tax, but the tax itself and the fact that it’s not set by the market. Once they allow third-party appstores they can charge 50% for all I care.
Was BlackBerry undone by rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch too? And Symbian too?
> Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well.
Of course. But it hasn't been done well in the mobile world, has it? So why is it relevant here?
I remember pre 2008 when carriers controlled apps on phones. I also remember xda-developers days. Discoverability, distribution and quality was disaster compared to what we have today. And do you know what developers earned from their applications compared to today?
People take marketplaces and what has been done in the last 10 years for granted.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to go through the catalogue of failures in the mobile world. Nokia afaik didn’t even pay developers, certainly not when they were spinning around trying to reboot their fossil OS - no app, paid or otherwise, could save that pile of crap. Blackberry I never followed, but I understand they also crumbled largely from within, I don’t think they ever paid developers either.
> why is it relevant here
It’s relevant in the sense that the lack of success of one particular effort does not mean the strategy is absolutely bad, as you were arguing.
You may need to rethink your arguments as I found them indistinguishable from parody!!