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Comment by ebbp | Hacker News Reader

My partner works in buying for physical retail (caveats: nothing to do with software, also she’s generally worked mid market and above, rather than anything high volume/low cost) and I believe _margin_ is often 30-60%, or a range similar to that. Larger retailers will also have agreements with suppliers where the margin is stipulated, I believe per SKU.

Obviously the comparison is slightly Apples to oranges, as physical retailers have massive overheads/COGS that Apple don’t incur for the App Store.

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Those physical retailers aren't paying engineer salaries to sit around and develop new IDEs, develop the app store ecosystem, content moderators etc. I think people see "zomg - I'm paying Apple 30% for their app store" without realizing the end retailer often charges a fairly large markup to run their part of the business.

apple can charge whatever they want once they allow alternatives for competition.

The point is none of the third party app stores pay for any of the platform development, so why should they get to benefit from them?

the platform development comes with sale of the platform - which is to say the customer has already paid to have it developed by buying the phone.

Many developers don't want to have apple be their gatekeeper for apps. They should be able to have alternatives. Apple's rent seeking behaviour is to take platform development in the cost of the device and again to distribute apps without any alternative.

So you think the Samsung model is correct? That is, devices shouldn’t receive any updates after the initial purchase?

I will accept the argument that apple’s gatekeeping is ridiculous, a lot of that is the bizarre prudishness of the US, but saying that apple should not be compensated at a rate that is generally below the market - the majority of apps on the AppStore are freemium from which apple makes nothing, the remainder are mostly only paying a 15% commission. This is vs 30% or so on game consoles, 30% on steam, etc.

apple is free to charge what they wish for the app store, and support phones for as long as they wish, so long as alternatives are possible.

So you do support the Samsung model? Where the only way to get security updates is through buying a new phone?

you're offering a false equivalence that isnt required for my argument to be true, so I'm going to say 'i never said that, you did,and you never managed to make a logical argument out of it yet'.

I agree and this debate is infuriating. They got paid when I bought their hardware. I should owe them nothing more to use the device after that point.

It's already a competitive landscape. If you feel Apple is unfairly charging you extra for something, then you have a myriad number of Android and other phones to choose from.

On the other hand, if Apple's model allows them to better compete with others and create a superior product that people want ... well then, it's ridiculous to mandate they should do business a different way.

>Apple's model allows them to better compete

their business business model allows them to compete because they're rent seeking by grazing off developers and apps that dont want or need their app store, payment processor, etc.

Wow who knew rent seeking was massively profitable, huge surprise!

> The point is none of the third party app stores pay for any of the platform development ...

Isn't that because Apple doesn't allow for third party repos/stores/etc?

If that changes after all (I'm personally hoping it does), then it would make sense that the new alternative store(s) would have their own overheads (development, running costs, etc) and would have their own fees.

That seems sensible, yeah?

The other stores wouldn't be paying for the ongoing development and maintenance of the iOS, UIKit, OpenGL/Metal, etc. That stuff is NOT cheap to develop and maintain. The final app that you see is trivial compared to the mountain of libraries and frameworks that Apple provides.

people who buy the phones pay for ongoing development and maintenance of ios and apple's software.

> The other stores wouldn't be paying for the ongoing development and maintenance of the iOS, UIKit, OpenGL/Metal, etc.

Sure. And who cares? That has nothing at all to do with the App Store fees. :)

On the other hand the physical stores aren’t developing any of the technology used in what they sell?

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