You can suspect based on no evidence, but nobody knows, and Apple refuses to say.
The crazy thing is, if Apple truly wants to drop support for older version of the SDKs, then how in the world does it make sense to exempt the most used apps???
Again, a guess based on zero empirical evidence. Also, Apple's "rule" here makes no distinction between paid and free apps. Indeed, free apps tend to have more downloads than paid apps, which means that Apple would be targeting the wrong apps if they were looking to offset costs.
Basically a cost saving move.
> Basically a cost saving move.
Working 1-on-1 with companies to determine what to keep and what not is anything but cost saving, by my estimate.