The fee to set up a developer account is $99/year. The biggest apps on the store and the smallest pay the same fee. A fixed fee helps to equalize the barrier to

The fee to set up a developer account is $99/year. The biggest apps on the store and the smallest pay the same fee. A fixed fee helps to equalize the barrier to entry, and everyone likes that. On the other hand, App Store's cost structure is not fixed. Spotify costs Apple vastly more than an app with 1000 installs. This needs to be accounted for. > Nothing about the streaming or value delivered is in any way related to the App Store. Entirely incorrect. By taking a percentage of transactions, App Store is incentivized to help apps grow. From day one, getting featured on App Store has driven serious business outcomes for developers. This has only grown over the years, especially after Apple started to focus on marketing apps more deliberately with the "For You" tab. That's a service that they provide "for free". You get an email from Apple saying that they'd like to feature your app, send over some creative assets, they write an article, and suddenly you're getting a lot of "free" installs. This is only one example of the value that apps get "for free" from Apple and the App Store. And again, this levels the playing field between big and small developers. Of course, nothing is actually free. Apple is a business and not only needs to be compensated for the value that they provide, but they also need to make a profit. That's why they take a cut of transactions. An alternative model would be to charge for all of this à la carte. All promotion would be paid for directly. Bandwidth would be metered and invoiced. WWDC sessions locked behind a paywall. Maybe that would even add up to be less than 30% of revenue. Certainly big developers would like it -- up and coming competitors would have a much tougher time competing than today.