I hope that the Dutch demand a breakdown on that commission to see where it goes, if it's not just a number that they pulled out of their ass.
Surely they wouldn't put hosting and approval processes there if free apps don't pay separately for those?
Surely they wouldn't put hosting and approval processes there if free apps don't pay separately for those?
Distribution is a one-time expense, and it does not entitle you to a 30% cut of services that use Apps as endpoints. It's a mob move, taxation because you are powerful enough to harm another business, not because you have contributed to the business.
No, it's not. Distribution requires ongoing storage and bandwidth costs.
> It's a mob move, taxation because you are powerful enough to harm another business, not because you have contributed to the business.
This is just flaming. Apple absolutely have contributed to the business. They provide hosting, storage, versioning, a marketplace, storefront reviews, developer tools, various high-availability services (auth being one of them). We can argue all day how much that is worth, but it is definitely worth some number greater than 0, otherwise people would just ignore the platforms.
Or are you arguing that the 30% cut is used to subsidize the remainder of the free apps?
You really should bone up on anti-competitive behavior before accusing people of flaming.
People are forced into this model, the alternatives have been degraded to the point that they no longer function for all intents and purposes you have to distribute your app through Apple.
> Explain please how distribution is tied in to the unknown price point at which the other company proceeds to do business?
This is not what you said, you said it was a one time expense. Those two statements are not the same.
> Or are you arguing that the 30% cut is used to subsidize the remainder of the free apps?
You're putting words in my mouth here. I'm not arguing the 30% cut is used to subsidise the remainder of the apps, I'm arguing that free apps still have distribution costs.
> You really should bone up on anti-competitive behavior before accusing people of flaming.
I stand by my accusation of flaming - just becasue you have a point doesn't mean it couldn't be made in a better way.
> People are forced into this model, the alternatives have been degraded to the point that they no longer function for all intents and purposes you have to distribute your app through Apple.
That I don't disagree with one bit, and if your initial comment had said that rather than " It's a mob move, taxation because you are powerful enough to harm another business, not because you have contributed to the business." I wouldn't have commented on it.
I would argue that 99.9% of apps on the app store ever get to the point where 99$ a year is even remotely the cost incurred by Apple.
Now maybe 15 percent is a more reasonable price, but Apple developed the phone, apple developed the SDK, apple made it available to everybody, heck Apple even developed the computer language used.
This is all available for anybody for a fixed percentage, which means that it scales pretty well with how much you make and it cost you nothing more than 100 dollars a year if you don't charge people.