So your response is to find a bunch of features and assign an arbitrary 5% value to each of them and conclude Apple is doing you a favor?
> Apple handles chargebacks/disputes for you.
In many cases they forward the complaint on to you as the developer for "does not perform as described".
> If you ran payment processing yourself through Stripe, you might pay 3%. ... We also have fraud prevention and management, which Apple provides. An app developer never has to deal with fraud on the App Store.
You're double dipping. You already subtracted some money for Stripe, unless you're implying they _don't_ have fraud protection and management?
> Next you have to deal with a CDN for delivery of the purchased app. Where do you store the file? How do you secure it? Who pays for the bandwidth of distributing it? Who maintains that system? With the App Store you don’t have to deal with any of that. I would say that’s worth at least 5%.
Or Cloudflare for $20/mo?
> So the App Store gives you the ordering system, access to many more markets than you’d likely normally be able to handle yourself as well as the aforementioned search and discovery. There is also the trust factor: why would I download some random music player from some random site off the internet? That concern is going to create a high barrier to getting large numbers of people to download the app. Not so on the App Store.
> I would say all of that is worth at least 8%.
Sounds like an artificial barrier to me. "Insert roadblock, charge for roadblock, say I'm doing you a favor". I'm also not sure how you think you magically don't have to do any SEO or marketing just because you're in the Apple Store, let alone that it's automatically worth "8%".
No-one is saying that the Apple Store doesn't add value or manageability.
But I am questioning your magic calculations that just happen to reduce Apple's tax to effectively nothing.
Apropos of anything else, developers handling "millions" of downloads are in the single percent range. And can also afford economies of scale to support things themselves, CDNs, merchant accounts and the like. But instead they have to pay Apple's flat rate.
> Apple handles chargebacks/disputes for you.
In many cases they forward the complaint on to you as the developer for "does not perform as described".
> If you ran payment processing yourself through Stripe, you might pay 3%. ... We also have fraud prevention and management, which Apple provides. An app developer never has to deal with fraud on the App Store.
You're double dipping. You already subtracted some money for Stripe, unless you're implying they _don't_ have fraud protection and management?
> Next you have to deal with a CDN for delivery of the purchased app. Where do you store the file? How do you secure it? Who pays for the bandwidth of distributing it? Who maintains that system? With the App Store you don’t have to deal with any of that. I would say that’s worth at least 5%.
Or Cloudflare for $20/mo?
> So the App Store gives you the ordering system, access to many more markets than you’d likely normally be able to handle yourself as well as the aforementioned search and discovery. There is also the trust factor: why would I download some random music player from some random site off the internet? That concern is going to create a high barrier to getting large numbers of people to download the app. Not so on the App Store.
> I would say all of that is worth at least 8%.
Sounds like an artificial barrier to me. "Insert roadblock, charge for roadblock, say I'm doing you a favor". I'm also not sure how you think you magically don't have to do any SEO or marketing just because you're in the Apple Store, let alone that it's automatically worth "8%".
No-one is saying that the Apple Store doesn't add value or manageability.
But I am questioning your magic calculations that just happen to reduce Apple's tax to effectively nothing.
Apropos of anything else, developers handling "millions" of downloads are in the single percent range. And can also afford economies of scale to support things themselves, CDNs, merchant accounts and the like. But instead they have to pay Apple's flat rate.