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Comment by klabb3 | Hacker News Reader

> Apple's 30% cut makes them tons of revenue

Compared to? All taxes mean fewer transactions – and purchases that never happen don’t generate revenue. This is not easily measurable. Most SaaS or similar services probably go through other devices or email to handle transactions.

Apples payments and subscriptions are excellent products but how much goes through there of say revenue for streaming services like Spotify and Netflix? Is that even supported? As an iOS user, I would never dream of trusting that the IAP prices are a good deal, and especially if I want to support the company I would sign up on their website.

I’ve said before that even if they were allowing (or better, forced to allow) competition, people would still pay a premium, maybe 10%, to have all subscriptions in one place with one-click unsubscribe. They simply don’t believe their own product can stand on its own without crutches, for some bean counter reason.

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> I’ve said before that even if they were allowing (or better, forced to allow) competition, people would still pay a premium, maybe 10%, to have all subscriptions in one place with one-click unsubscribe. They simply don’t believe their own product can stand on its own without crutches, for some bean counter reason.

The users aren't the issue, the developers are. Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS in order to get users into their dark patterns where you have to call to unsubscribe; can you imagine what shady game developers would do?

> The users aren't the issue, the developers are.

Just to clarify, you are referring to companies, not necessarily their developers.

> Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS

No they don’t? I just check their app listing and you can use Apples own IAP. In either case, NYT can have reputable reporting while still being complete slimes when it comes to subscriptions. And even so, it strengthens the argument that Apple and other subscription aggregators deliver value (relatively - our CC centric payment world is abysmally bad), meaning users are willing to pay, meaning merchants are willing to use it to get sales they couldn’t otherwise.

> can you imagine what shady game developers would do?

If what, they could do whatever they wanted? Apple (or any other curator) could still police against fraud and misleading consumers. What does that have to do with the 30% tax?

I am sure plenty of people, if not majority of people will happy pay the 10% premium just because the subscription goes through Apple and have a peace of mind. That allows them to easily unsubscribe.

That is the thing about the whole 30%. It is not flexible, stringent and does not adopt to market. Even Tax by state have more flexility than they do.

And I have been saying this since 2013 but every time I get downvoted to oblivion for it. If Apple had move their Game into a Separate Store. They would have kept 75% to 80% of their App Store revenue at 30% cut. They could then charge 10% on top of all subscription and 15% for downloads. Once you include all the payment processing fees, fraud and additional services and value Apple offers the 10% extra meant for example Netflix actually earns more from an Apple's sign up. That create incentives for other companies to work with this Model. While Apple would still keep ~90% of their current App Store revenue. And I assume without much of the backlash and regulation that they had to fight and costing them hundreds of millions in operation, PR and brand damages.

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