Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

Yes but many of the larger players who are willing to go to war use the 'its not fair on smaller developers' argument against them.

This really slaps down the ability to use that.

…which, like many of Apple's moves regarding the App Store, is basically "let's shut down the ability of people to complain" rather than "let's actually fix things so people won't complain".

15% is still not fair.

And you calculated that how?

It's a level that state would take to take care for roads, healthcare, civil service, army and so on. There is no justification for such high % to maintain an app. They could charge per app review and maybe the data transfer fee no more than Amazon S3. Anything else is Apple abusing their monopoly. Developer can't submit their app to an alternative app store because Apple doesn't allow that and it must change.

> There is no justification for such high % to maintain an app

Again, you calculated that how?

For app store listing and promotion, application delivery all over the world to hundreds of millions of devices, access to back end services like notifications and iCloud storage, and sales transaction processing? Really?

Imagine if you had to develop or pay for all of those services individually. Your own download site, product promotion, services, a third party transaction processor, a content delivery network, bespoke cloud syncing, etc, etc.

A lot of small devs are going to be over this threshold.

It's not 'maintain' - its offer all the services that come along with it (integrations, store, download, hosting, authentication).

If you produce a food product, you should expect the store to take a cut of the price before it gets to you.

Well, the app store cannot exist without app and phone without apps is essentially worthless (unless it has at least the caller app). So who is promoting who? The so called application delivery is just a file server that anyone can setup for peanuts these days. Apple offers no alternative for notifications or storage - there is no competition so they can dictate extortionate prices. Yes many companies would love to run these services on their own, but they can't as Apple is blocking it.

30% is honestly a terrible deal as Apple does not provide the value for the money they are charging. The difference is you are forced into that arrangement you don't have the option of doing it all yourself.

If you had to develop all of those services yourself, it would look a lot like the internet. None of the things you mention are particularly challenging for the modern web.

These things that you listed are not that expensive to run.

If you produce a food product you can also set up your own store, but you can't in case of Apple.

Unlike a commercial company a state is not for-profit enterprise. Maybe you think that app stores shouldn't be for-profit marketplaces either?

I don't get "you are forced" part. If a deal is bad for you, don't take it.

Good for them! That's a lot of money.

It's not a lot of money if 10-20 people are splitting it between wages and employment taxes and health care and rent and marketing.

You can be quite a small business and still go over a million in revenue. This is more like "single small team" as a threshold.

No it doesn't. Apple and Google have stood on the neck of the mobile app distribution market for over a decade, and small developers have suffered for it. This change doesn't address the problem at all.

I'm not saying it addresses the problem, I'm saying it gives their competitors less ammunition against them in court.

Google Android allows 3rd Party app stores and sideloading, with $0 0% fee. Hardly neck-standing.

You seem to be conflating revenue with profit.

Then you are a victim of Apple's tortious interference between yourself and your customers. Apple installs malware on every iDevice preventing users from installing apps they choose to purchase from 3rd parties.

Dropbox is great. But Apple bans its customers and app developers from using Dropbox as an an app delivery system.

The state is not-for-profit because it is a monopoly. Like Apple.

The only way to implement automatic upgrading, background installation or batch upgrading/installation of apps is via the Play Store. Third party app stores cannot compete with the Play Store on feature parity.