I remember that when it was first announced it was big news they were only charging 30%. I was a mobile app developer at the time and before the App Store the usual way for people to buy games on their phones was by sending an SMS to a shortcode. You would then get a reverse-billing SMS (a.k.a. premium SMS) with the download link. The telco’s would usually take around a 50% commission on that SMS.
50% of your revenue, for delivering up to 140 bytes to a phone. Note that delivering a message was the only thing they did. You had to write the code to handle the incoming SMS message and send the reply. You had to host this service and serve the downloads (meaning you had to also pay for hosting and bandwidth). You also had to set this up for every single country you want to offer it in. None of this was discoverable, so you had to advertise your game/app as well. Also, the development tools were absolute shit (and you had to pay for those as well).
In comes Apple, who lets you keep 70%, provides excellent dev tools (I know it’s trendy to hate on Xcode, but even early versions of Xcode were heaven compared to the absolute shit show we had to deal with before). They host the app, they make it discoverable in their app store, they handle payments and make it all available worldwide.
So yeah, I’d say it was more than reasonable. Is it still reasonable in today’s market? Hard to say.
Reading your comment brings back memories and old knowledge hidden away in deep memory.
This might be due to a slightly different era and/or market, but I recall in the WAP and i-mode era, 50/50 would’ve been amazing.
More often than not, you’d be lucky if you got 30%, and you’d brag if you’d get 40%. In most cases, you’d be left with a measly 10%, and none of it included payment processing, which ate up a few percent more.
The worst part wasn’t the revenue split, though believe it or not, it was negotiating with multiple carriers over every little thing, and it could take months to get things going.
Discoverability was a bit better in this era than what you describe because carriers would have a little directory in which they listed apps. Of course, being listed in this directory, especially in a helpful way, would eat up more of your revenue share.
Carriers were also acting in a dirty way. If something was wrong and a customer complained, they’d charge you a refund but wouldn’t pass it along to the customer. Essentially, telling the customer they’re SOOL while telling the developer to pay up because their app didn’t work and then pocket that money.
The barrier to entry was also high and costly. Developer tools were shit, as you said, and the pipeline from development to sales was nearly non-existent.
So yeah, of course, in comparison, Apple was some kind of utopia, not despite the 30% but because of it, not to mention how hassle-free it is and, like you said, the excellent tools provided.
I genuinely like Xcode despite the hate it gets, and I’d say that it’s been significantly improved over the last decade or so.
Similarly, the improvements and development of frameworks in the last couple of years are tremendous.
I’d say all of it is well worth the 30%, but at the 15% I’m at now, it’s close to a steal.
Without exaggeration, the latest developments in frameworks really make my life easier, and some of what I do wouldn’t even be possible without it.
The framing around the commission is starting to irk me the wrong way.
In part because these big developers such as Epic, Spotify, and the like claim to speak for me, to make it look like they fight for “the little guy” and drum up support when they plainly don’t.
Their interests and mine are miles apart and only marginally overlap and, in some cases, contradict each other.
In part, it is also because the effective rate for most developers is 15%, regardless of Apple’s motivations behind that discounted rate.
15% in exchange for the low barrier of entry and the solid tools that allow you to spin up an app and publish it on the App Store within a day or two is a pretty solid deal, in my opinion.
50% of your revenue, for delivering up to 140 bytes to a phone. Note that delivering a message was the only thing they did. You had to write the code to handle the incoming SMS message and send the reply. You had to host this service and serve the downloads (meaning you had to also pay for hosting and bandwidth). You also had to set this up for every single country you want to offer it in. None of this was discoverable, so you had to advertise your game/app as well. Also, the development tools were absolute shit (and you had to pay for those as well).
In comes Apple, who lets you keep 70%, provides excellent dev tools (I know it’s trendy to hate on Xcode, but even early versions of Xcode were heaven compared to the absolute shit show we had to deal with before). They host the app, they make it discoverable in their app store, they handle payments and make it all available worldwide.
So yeah, I’d say it was more than reasonable. Is it still reasonable in today’s market? Hard to say.