This isn't remotely equivalent or comparable. First, you're free to choose other forms of payment. Visa isn't holding a gun to your head. I know many sellers simply adjust their prices if you're paying credit -- see almost every gas station in the US. You can't do that with Apple.
Second, the fees actually benefit the customer. They're there to protect the customer from fraud, and to provide perks. I have no idea how I benefit from Apple's fees. Seriously.
Comically, I think Apple should adapt Epic's model for unreal: free for the first $1MM of revenue, only then they start to take a cut.
> First, you're free to choose other forms of payment. Visa isn't holding a gun to your head.
And you're free to choose another phone vendor. Apple isn't holding a gun to your head.
> I know many sellers simply adjust their prices if you're paying credit -- see almost every gas station in the US. You can't do that with Apple.
You can't do that with PayPal, either.
> I have no idea how I benefit from Apple's fees. Seriously.
The host the AppStore for you; allow you to search, access and download all apps and provide an infrastructure for updates and payment. Plus, they're doing basic fraud checking [0] and check that apps adhere to a basic quality and usability standard.
It's a very different topic whether the 30% cut is too much, but its not like Apple does not provide anything in return.
[0] Other comments pointed out that they failed quite badly in a case, but there's a difference between bad service and no service.
> And you're free to choose another phone vendor. Apple isn't holding a gun to your head.
You're "free" to choose one side of the same coin, because Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile app distribution market. They both abuse that market dominance to prevent competition in the mobile app distribution market from offering consumers better, more efficient and cheaper options.
Google prevents mobile app distribution competitors from competing with the Play Store on feature parity because user installable 3rd party mobile app stores cannot implement automatic upgrades, background installation of apps, or batch installs of apps like the Play Store can.
And you're free to use another ISP or start digging your own Fibre cables. The duopoly has extreme power over our lines and the impact is just like with utilities.
Technically not really true, it's based on a complex system where if your run rate ever exceeds $1m (even temporarily) you get bumped into the 30% bracket for this year and the next year, even if your revenue next year is 100k. (I'm still confused that they decided to make the system that complicated, it can't increase their profits THAT much.)
This system coincidentally punishes non-subscription products like non-IAP games, where your "launch" produces a big revenue spike and then you have a much smaller long tail of revenue. To avoid getting punished by this, you'd have to optimize for a lower-revenue launch and more stable long-term revenue... i.e. a subscription.
Second, the fees actually benefit the customer. They're there to protect the customer from fraud, and to provide perks. I have no idea how I benefit from Apple's fees. Seriously.
Comically, I think Apple should adapt Epic's model for unreal: free for the first $1MM of revenue, only then they start to take a cut.