Apple is making money off of the developers. That registration fee 8x more than the average one will ever make.
And that money has been side funnelled into something far more lucrative - infrastructure for distributing books and movies.
And that money has been side funnelled into something far more lucrative - infrastructure for distributing books and movies.
The registration fee is $99, Apple has paid out $4 billion as of February this year, and there are ~.25 million registered iOS developers in US, let's be generous and say there are 1M registered developers worldwide. It still averages out $4K pay out per registered developer.
How can you use the $12 per iOS device app revenue to extrapolate average developers' income is totally beyond me.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/03/app-store-25-billion/
(And thanks for correcting me on the reg fee. I thought it was $200 for some reason.)