My understanding was that the $12 is per phone across all apps. So the app developer "team" is really the union of all the teams who sell apps rather than just

My understanding was that the $12 is per phone across all apps. So the app developer "team" is really the union of all the teams who sell apps rather than just one team. Which is probably much bigger than all of Apple. Also, invoking the law of the market in a market tightly controlled by one company (Apple) should be done with caution. The app store is very far from a perfect free market, so making broad generalizations about it from an economic standpoint is more difficult. (I certainly don't know enough to generalize anything :P. I just know enough to tell that it isn't exactly a free market.)