You don't see the real problem: the device that you buy (paying a lot of money in case of an iPhone) is not really yours. You can install the apps that Apple ap

You don't see the real problem: the device that you buy (paying a lot of money in case of an iPhone) is not really yours. You can install the apps that Apple approves. To me that is unacceptable and should be made illegal. When the user buys a phone he expect it to be able to use it with all the software that he wants, and not to be limited of what Apple approves. If not let's write it with a big red font on the box and see how many people buy iPhones anymore... The problem is not the fee that the App Store imposes to you. The problem is that you don't have an alternative, either you accept the fee that Apple imposes to you or iPhone users have no way to use your software (beside jailbreak). And since cutting out iPhone users is unacceptable for all companies you either have to accept the Apple policy or respond to thusands of angry customers that asks why the app is only available for Android or the iPhone version of the app has not all the feature of the Android one (since the final user usually don't know that there are these restriction in place). On Android if you don't agree with the Google Play policy you can simply let the user download the apk from your website and install it manually on your phone. Granted, you loose the visibility that you have on the Play Store and you have to implement updates and push notifications manually without relying on the Play Service. Or you can choose of distribuiting your software trough an alternative App Store, that the user can install on its phone like any other application.