Someone working on a subscription application here and quite intimiately know all data around our acquisition, retention, engagement - you can subscribe to us t

Someone working on a subscription application here and quite intimiately know all data around our acquisition, retention, engagement - you can subscribe to us through apple or you can subscribe outside the apple ecosystem - and apple only takes the cut when through them. Ultimately - it's the user choice where they're going to do it - and if the user wants to reward the company, they could subscribe through other means. Most users don't know this, obviously, but it is a possibility. And if we reach them through a different acquisition channel, the users won't subscribe through Apple, they will subscribe elsewhere. However, the customers who subscribe through Apple are usually a lot more valuable to us (more affluent, stable payments, more engaged), and even with the 30% cut, having Apple as an acquisition channel is valuable. It is not worth it for us to go out of Apple's ecosystem. Apple know this - and are just playing the economics. They are aware the added benefits to the user and the marketing pull they have in their store. The next step for App Store is going to be changing the 30% to fit the business model of whatever they're marketing - if they're rational. There was already suggestion that for streaming apps (very high operating cost, very low margin) they might drop to 15% - because they'll try matching the economics to the barely positive tradeoff for the businesses using the app store. I see nothing wrong with the Apple model from a business standpoint of a multi-platform business. When something is specifically an app business it becomes more tricky because essentially in order to acquire the customer they have to install the app so the app store becomes your main acquisition channel. But even there you could argue that your business model wouldn't exist if Apple wasn't providing the customers, OS, app store and marketing. So it makes sense for Apple to take a larger cut (in relative terms per acquisition volumes).