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Comment by 23iuhj23oi | Hacker News Reader

Apple get's 30% from sales in their app store without doing much. It is a huge amount of money for very little effort.

Here's what developers get for their 30%, and yes for very little effort on the developer's part:

  - 24/7 worldwide availability, instant payment/app download
  - Easy re-install after deletion, you still own the app even if deleted
    from the device
  - Region restriction
  - Separate app pricing by region
  - Revenues paid to developer from multiple region currencies without
    conversion fees
  - Tax calculation and collection
  - Instant customer refunds
  - User rankings and reviews
  - App store advertising in category listings
  - Video previews of the app in operation
  - Packaging of media content allowing developers the ability to load game
    levels as needed. This allows a user to start playing your game quickly.
  - App sales stats

Development of that amortized years ago and maintenance + new features cost small fractions of that 30%.

So what if it amortized? That's why Apple made that investment in the first place, so that they can make profit out of it. If any app developer tried to re-create it now it would cost them much more than 30% of their revenue.

As someone also hosting my own fdroid repo for my own apps, no, it wouldn't.

You don't need most of that, and what you do need can be had extremely cheaply at 10-50€/mo + 0.2%

No it can’t. Almost nobody uses fdroid for good reason. It’s also simply not comparable from a business standpoint, dealing with the taxation and regulation in a hundred countries seamlessly.

But what if I don’t care about that? Why should I pay extra for something I don’t care about? I don’t need the marketing, I don’t need to be featured in the front page of the store, I don’t need taxation and regulation for 100+ countries.

Why should I pay for these things I don’t care about? Why can’t these be separate costs, which I could opt-in? Why can’t they be unbundled?

Also the App Store ripped 70% fee rates out of the carrier’s hands.

Apple’s 30% was a huge deal in the mobile software space when it hit. That’s why so many people defected. And when they started turning profits, others followed. Most of the millionaires IIRC came out of the second and third wave, before everyone and their mother were doing it and people were making money telling you how they made a million 2 years ago (tricks that didn’t necessarily still work).

I agree that it’s a shame that Apple hasn’t periodically lowered their fees. Even a couple percent would make news. However, a different group would cry monopoly (dumping) because it would have kept more people focused on IOS exclusive applications.

They did eventually bow to public opinion and they lowered the fees for small developers to 15% a couple years ago.

I keep hoping they lower the fees for everything except in-app purchases. I think it would do their customers a lot of good.

> lowered the fees for small developers to 15%

Worth noting that this covers almost all developers.

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