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It seems crazy to me that they're allowed to do this. Imagine paying 30% more for software on your computer. It's pretty obvious that very few competitors could

• bestnameever 6y ago
  > Imagine paying 30% more for software on your computer. That is not really hard to imagine. Most of what we purchase has markups.
  • Skunkleton 6y ago
    I wonder how much major apps save in marketing cost by being on app stores? I’m always shocked at the cost of marketing.
    • bestnameever 6y ago
      I think that is a difficult question to answer as so much has changed but there is value to being listed on the app store just as is there is value on having your product on a birck and motors shelf.
    • michaelmrose 6y ago
      Merely being available on the app store doesn't meaningfully constitute marketing and there is absolutely no reason to suppose that they saved anything whatsoever. I know little about the apple store but there is a lot of content on the play store with most of it bring drek and the search is terrible.
    • toyg 6y ago
      Zero. Appstore gives no exposure whatsoever to 99.99% of the apps and games it contains. Say you are a book publisher and a library buys your book and stocks it on a shelf in their basement - do you think you’ve saved anything in marketing?
    • nmfisher 6y ago
      Honestly, I suspect zero. My app is on the major stores and literally zero downloads come from simple organic listing. It's pretty clear we need to invest considerably in our own channels/marketing. In all fairness, though, while a Store listing doesn't guarantee users, the absence of a Store listing does guarantee no users. Epic found this out with Fornite when they tried to get users to sideload via their own website. So a Store listing is a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition. The user funnel seems to be awareness via non-Store marketing channels -> search on Play/App Store -> install. Remove the second step and your funnel disintegrates. On the other hand, it's also possible that Fortnite's Android woes were due to artificial hurdles (e.g. requiring users to first navigate menus to allow "unsafe" side-loading). I suspect they don't have this difficulty on PC where it's just a simple go to website->download->install.
      • simonh 6y ago
        I don't think that's comparable. Major apps will get prominent first-page listing on the App Store and will show up frequently at the top of searches, and Apple does not charge for that. Random indie app won't get this level of promotion. I'm not sure how to account for that fairly, it seems wrong to charge for prominent listing, but on the other hand it seems wrong to charge small indie devs the same as the majors while shuffling them in deep in the catalogue. Maybe the discount for small publishers Apple announced recently will help with this, though that system does seem to have it's own flaws.
        • Hamuko 6y ago
          >Major apps will get prominent first-page listing on the App Store Major apps don't really need that anyways. One of the promotions on the iOS App Store is "If you love indoor plants". The first three apps in that story are "Get some inspiration: Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest". I sincerely doubt any of those three needed any additional promotion in order to get App Store downloads. The apps that actually would benefit from getting promoted, and also the Ebay app, are further down in the article.
      • donmcronald 6y ago
        > On the other hand, it's also possible that Fortnite's Android woes were due to artificial hurdles (e.g. requiring users to first navigate menus to allow "unsafe" side-loading). I suspect they don't have this difficulty on PC where it's just a simple go to website->download->install. I suspect this is a big part of it. I chickened out installing a 3rd party App Store once because Google’s warnings sort of make it sound like you’ll lose the permission prompts on individual apps. Even side loading a single app I think it might be a bit ambiguous. No matter what the details are, side loading is always an intentionally degraded experience regardless of platform based on my experience.
  • jariel 6y ago
    Markups are almost always a function of cost. BestBuy is always teetering on 'not making money' - their markups are a function of market competition. Apple is leveraging it's market power on all sides i.e. consumers, suppliers, and 3rd party marketplace vendors. The massive margins (after markup) are basically a measure of that power.
    • imtringued 6y ago
      That money has to subsidize free apps. If every app was a free app and the apps offered in app purchases without involving apple's payment system then Apple would get nothing. The rules and mandatory cuts have to exist to ensure the continued existence of the App Store. The alternative to an App store with a 30% cut on everything is a store without free apps and a complete ban of in app purchases. I personally have never understood the selfish HN user arguments against any particular cut because if you followed those arguments through they would want Apple to give them a negative cut because they only care about themselves with no single though about the consequences of their wishes.
      • donmcronald 6y ago
        > The alternative to an App store with a 30% cut on everything is a store without free apps and a complete ban of in app purchases. Where do I sign up for this dream store? I’d be pretty happy to see all the low effort skinner box trash disappear overnight.
      • sto_hristo 6y ago
        The true alternative to an app store with 30% cut is simply an open mobile standard OS that allows users to do whatever they want with their hardware and software. Just like with PCs, but on a smaller form factor. On PCs you don't have app stores or any of that kind of bullshit, yet you still have plenty of free software, lots of powerful paid software, which you pay directly to the creators. Why can't people see that mobile phones are just a different form factor of a computer?
        • ralfd 6y ago
• ece 6y ago
  There's no Jailbreak needed for installing apps and alternate app stores. Just a permission change to install F-Droid, Amazon App Store or something else. Another permission change in developer settings lets you unlock the boot loader and install alternate ROMs like Lineage and get root. A few of the cheaper phones sold by carriers as part of pre-paid plans and such might not be able to unlock the boot loader, but you're still free to sideload any apps you want. I wish there were more big name apps that would get on F-Droid or one of the alternative app stores on Android. The more competition there is, the better for developers and users.
• cinquemb 6y ago
  > but you can't do this on Apple's phones. You can a couple of different ways if you are a power user, but its a bit more work than most are willing to put into it…
  • pastage 6y ago
    Please tell me how, I've spent $100 a year to do that for a Iphone device. That's a lot more than 25% of $0 that I pay to support Android.
• powerapple 6y ago
  I image it would be like "paying 30% of your car price to road tax". It can happen when roads are privately owned.
  • perryizgr8 6y ago
    This is literally true in many countries.
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Between tolls, fuel taxes, annual car registration fees, and other government taxes that go towards paying for roads, I wouldn’t be surprised if it approached 30% for many people already. It can happen even if roads are taxpayer owned.
• simonh 6y ago
  That's routine cost of business. Humble Bundle takes 25% of sale revenue, just for the distribution and marketing, and companies are queuing up to work with them. Steam also takes 30%. Both of these are for software you run on your computer. In fact Steam kills the whole "Apple store is a gouge" premise stone dead. It literally is just a distribution mechanism on desktop computers, where you absolutely can side load apps and games as much as you like, and they're still considered very much worth 30% by the market. There's a reasonable discussion to be had about side-loading on iOS, that's a separate issues, but the idea that the App Store cut is unreasonable in the market is clearly bogus.
  • donmcronald 6y ago
    Humble Bundle seems like a good deal. They have a built in audience and you’re guaranteed visibility / promotion. The other 2 are a total scam unless you get put on a featured page. What’s the value of being alongside 1 million other apps with terrible discoverability? Developers still have to do all their own promotion and drive customers to the platform for purchase, but then Steam or Apple get 30 % for ringing through the transaction. IMO those 30% fees would drop to 10% very quickly if there were competition.
    • simonh 6y ago
      If Steam is a scam, why do developers choose to be on it, when PCs are an open platform?
      • rimiform 6y ago
        Because they're the best scam in town! I'm assuming it depends on the developer, though. Some are on Itch instead, mostly very indie devs.
      • donmcronald 6y ago
        They’re the victims of demand aggregation commoditizing the supply side of the market. It’s not so much a choice as it is a requirement to access the market. I think if developers set their price and Steam listed their 30% as a “Steam Fee” you’d see outraged gamers.
• sunir 6y ago
  It’s not crazy. They are aggregating and organizing the buyers as a retailer. It is the same as if you sold a phone case in the Apple Store. Apple demands a margin for their value. A more apt point of contention is whether or not you should have the right as a customer to install apps outside the App Store retail experience. You can actually but it isn’t easy. Another related issue is whether or not customers acquired outside the Apple store should yield a margin once installing an iPhone app. Essentially the entire question is if the phone is a general purpose computer owned by the end user, the end user ought to have the right to install apps as they please without having to go through Apple.
  • banachtarski 6y ago
    > you can actually but it isn’t easy How?
    • sunir 6y ago
      You can either use up to 100 beta licenses from you developer account or Apple Enterprise to load within a company or use an HTML5 app (is that really what we are talking about?) or jailbreak which isn’t statutorially illegal—just against terms of service. Some more variants on the above in this article. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/how-to-get-iphone-software-without-using-apples-app-store.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/how-to-get-iphone-software-w... The crux of the argument against Apple is are they a legitimate intervenor in your personal decisions about what software to run on your hardware?
• Guidii 6y ago
  Android phones don't need a jailbreak. You can install APKs out of the box, including app stores.
• musicale 6y ago
  > It seems crazy to me that they're allowed to do this. Imagine paying 30% more for software on your computer. Thankfully nobody buys games on Steam to encourage such awful behavior. I too long for the low markup over wholesale that we used to enjoy on boxed software before the advent of these predatory app stores. > At least on Google phones you're allowed to jailbreak it and install whatever you want if you're a power user, but you can't do this on Apple's phones. It is undoubtely very true that you are allowed to jailbreak Google phones but Apple phones are forbidden. Chalk it up to Apple's absolutely unbreakable security and bug-free OS and the DMCA. It would be very nice if we could get a DMCA exception to explicitly legalize jailbreaking, like this one from 2018: https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2018/faqs.html https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2018/faqs.html
• swebs 6y ago
  >Imagine paying 30% more for software on your computer I would argue that prices are already as high as the market can bear so that raising prices would not raise total revenue. Instead you would have to imagine publishers making much less in profit, which would still be bad since less people would be inclined to make commercial software.