Paying 10% of your revenue for them to usurp your customer relationship seems like a bad deal to me.
For developers I think a possible strategy would be to sell two products; standard edition and iOS optimized. Charge +30% for the iOS version since Apple users are (supposedly) willing to pay more.
Charging iPhone users more was actually one of the suggestions Phil Schiller made. I'm pretty sure Spotify charges more for people who subscribe from within the iPhone app. They made a lot of noise a year or two ago about this and ended up with this approach.
Personally, I'm very skeptical of subscription options since many companies are bad actors; making it difficult to cancel or throwing adds and promotions at you.
A lot has to do with how it is framed. I think Apple would have less pushback if they charged 50% and told developers, we're providing the devices, the user base, the app store, the promotion, the dev tools, the payment processing, you're providing the app. We each need each other so let's split revenue 50/50. Seems it would be tougher to argue that, than 70/30 which is an arbitrary declaration.
Why though? Apple is well-aware of their worth in your sales funnel and know that customer acquisition outside of their store/devices is a lot more expensive.
Nobody would be complaining if you Apple's user-base wasn't so juicy that your best option is forking over 30%. If it was easy to acquire customers outside the store it wouldn't even be an issue.
Forking over 30% isn't the best option. It's the only option.
If Apple had unlisted apps that didn't show up in the store listings and required a click through from your website to get to the app's store page, I bet some developers would opt for that if it meant they didn't have to pay the 30% tax.
Right, but the value isn't that you're listed in the app store, the value is that you can collect payment on-device. The store isn't the retail space, the whole device it.
You could not release an app in their store and ignore their existence entirely. But that's ridiculous and you can't afford to do that because their user-base is so valuable. And so Apple charges a premium because they know that.
This is the second time in less than a day that you've broken HN's guideline against accusations of shillage, astroturfing, etc. It says this:
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That rule is in place for good reason: the overwhelming majority of such accusations are pure imagination, which makes them poison. It's also a cheap, aggressive internet tactic, which makes it ubiquitous. Cheap ubiquitous poison is an environmental hazard, especially on a site which is trying to deviate from internet default, so it needs to be regulated. This rule is how we do that here. There is plenty of past explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for anyone who wants it.
I only repeat the argument so I get to hear a bunch of people’s takes on it. Once you’re deep in a thread it’s pretty much only you and the person you’re replying to.
I don’t think the App Store is the source of customer acquisition. I think being able to sell on iOS devices is the source of customer acquisition. Being able to upsell a user to your premium service right there on the device is the valuable thing that costs a premium.
This is a really ambiguous, unusual, and (in my opinion) inappropriate use of the term "customer acquisition".
The App Store is a marketplace that connects people developing for a platform (iOS) to customers using devices compatible with that platform. It is also the only marketplace that does this. In this way, it is best thought of as a (monopolistic) distribution channel.
But why is the “App Store” the distribution channel and not the device itself? I mean Apple would be within their right to just not allow 3rd party apps at all on their devices so why is it weird that they take a cut from anyone who wants to set up a booth on their land?
Like it feels wrong to punish a company for not closing their platform like consoles do to any only working with a few select partners.
