As a point of reference, HumbleBundle charges 5% for the Humble payment widget. They handle hosting your data, all the payment systems for taking payments from most of the world, handling chargebacks on your behalf etc etc.
If you want to sell your game on the Humble Store on the other hand, well then they take a 25% cut. That’s the value in being able to deliver a customer.
Apple’s fixed 30% cut is effectively saying: our brand is more important than yours in delivering customers to your App. The imprinteur of being in our App Store and bringing you a customer is worth 30% of your income. Your ability to deliver your own customers is irrelevant; we’re taking 30% either way. Unsurprisingly this sticks in the craw of some companies.
The fact that Apple’s systems make it almost impossible to effectively communicate with your own customer is an even bigger problem for a customer-focused company who’s income & branding depend on a close relationship with their customers: those companies are completely stuffed by the Apple App model & are the reason the App Store has not lead to the explosion of innovation some of us expected - it’s just not possible for a company to sustain themselves outside a very narrow set of income generation patterns.
Do you see effective communication with customers being interrupted by the App Store page itself? For example, the UX on the app description where the only link is to Developer Website at the bottom under Information? Or a mix of things?
Can you propose or point at a set of proposed changes that would improve the opportunity for direct communication between app developers and their customers?
As an App seller, one might reasonably want to:
. Carry out market research on a representative cross section of users.
. Communicate directly with users for bug reports and errors.
. Have a channel for real, high touch end user support.
. Sell to end-users in ways that are not limited by the App store model that Apple enforces
. Communicate with end users (on an opt-in basis) for marketing & cross-selling other Apps.
In general, the App store model works fine for low-priced, low-sales touch, high sales numbers Apps. It’s terrible for high-touch, high value applications, which is why you simply don’t see very many of those being developed for the App store - they’re just not viable. It’s this lack that Gruber especially complains about & I think he’s right. Where are the $100 Apps that fulfill a need that only a small number of people have? No-where, because they can’t reach their customers on the App store, so there’s no point even developing them.
(Obviously this is talking in sweeping generalities here: there are some high value Apps, but none of them are sold through the App store - the App is supporting some service that is sold elsewhere.)