Comment by myrmidon
5 days ago
That is not so clear. Appstore revenue is ~ $100 billion/y, but Apple makes less than 30% from that.
So the question is: Would more convincing compliance have cost Apple more than single digit percentage decreases in Appstore sales? Comparing the F-Droid vs Playstore situation, this seems unlikely to me.
Apple’s take is 30%, but they have expenses that have to be covered by that. The profit if any would be much less than $30bn.
If Apple is so bad at this that they have to charge 30%, they should have failed in the free market to a competitor that can do the same or better for 3%. However, Apple has prevented that, not by being better or cheaper, but by implementing DRM that locks users out from having a choice (and the market as a whole ended up being a duopoly with cartel-like pricing).
Whether Apple can be cheaper isn't really the point (they should be, digital services are a very high margin business). It's that they're anti-competitive to the point that the market for paid apps and in-app payments became inefficient (in a financial sense).
> The profit if any would be much less than $30bn.
It doesn't cost that much to maintain and run the appstore, it is almost all profits.
You are trying to tell me that credit card processing fees are negligible, software engineers work for free, advertising doesn’t require overhead, etc…
I guess that kind of thinking that everything is basically free is why alot of startups just fail so easily.
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