I think you and I have different understandings of what marginal costs entail.
Take amazon for example. Let's say someone purchases a $100 backpack online. It would not be feasible for Apple to take a 15% or 30% cut (or any cut) because that is coming from the retailer, not from Amazon's earnings directly. Nor is the retailer able to benefit from economies of scale because each bag sold this way incurs a variable cost (ie: you need to purchase 100 bags in order to sell 100 bags). It's not a situation where the more you sell, the cheaper each bag is by comparison.
You may be right in that Amazon is an intermediary service, but it is also a service that Apple is not able to bill directly, because there is no part of its costs structure that uses iTunes for billing, and iTunes is really the only way Apple can reliably calculate how much money any one developer is making through their platform, so again, it makes sense to bill developers a percentage of money paid through it.
Same for Uber. Apple would be billing the drivers, not the parent company itself. This is what I mean when I say these companies have high marginal costs - each transaction or trip is literally one car and one driver, and the costs associated with each trip scales in line with the number of trips being made.
With regards to ebooks, I am assuming that the author of the ebook owns the rights, and therefore gets to keep 100% of ebook sales, minus whatever Amazon's cut is. Let's say I have spent 1 month to write a book. That is a sunk cost, in that the book has been written regardless of whether I decide to market it or not. If I sell one book online for $5, I earn $5 (minus amazon's cut), at zero cost (remember, the book has already been written). If I sell 100 copies online, I earn $500 (minus Amazon's cut), at still zero cost (no need to print additional copies or keep them in stock). If I sell 1 million copies online... (you get the drift).
And assuming I leave the book up indefinitely, it would theoretically go on to generate an endless stream of revenue for me without me having to do anything (people could still be buying my ebook 10 years from now and I don't even have to worry about keeping it in stock or the pages turning yellow or dealing with shipping / printing costs).
This is why it makes sense (to me at least) to charge a fee for selling of digital copies of books but not physical copies, because of the cost structure involved. This also extends to say, digital media vs physical discs. Or to put it simply, something that is consumed on your device vs something that is delivered to your house. Which is what Apple has chosen to do here.
This is in contrast with a company like say, Netflix. The content has already been filmed (a fixed / sunk cost). The hosting and server costs are pennies compared to this. Because marginal costs are practically zero, each subscription sold is pure profit. Netflix's job is therefore to calculate how much to charge so as to arrive as the optimal, profit-maximising point. We can argue about whether Apple deserves a cut of subscriptions made via iTunes, but in the very least, it makes sense that Apple would bill them over say, a backpack sold via amazon because the former has zero marginal costs of production (and therefore can afford it) while the latter doesn't.
I guess Spotify is in a bit of a unique position because while it deals with digital goods, it has a cost structure that scales with subscriber count, meaning it is not able to benefit from zero distribution costs the same way a company like Netflix can. Perhaps it should be an exception to Apple's billing rules, or perhaps it's just evidence that music streaming is not a sustainable business model. Bear in mind that Apple isn't really collecting any money from Spotify (they migrated everyone off iTunes a few years ago), and pay Google nothing. So if after all this, Spotify still can't make a profit, I don't see how being able to bill customers directly in-app would help them even if Apple didn't charge them 15/30%. This is the part of Spotify's criticism of Apple that has always struck me as incongruous. Like yeah, Spotify's technically not wrong, but it also hasn't really applied to their business model in ages.
So yeah, tell me that my basic finance degree from 2 decades ago still means something? 😛
It's clear that the marginal costs of the digital goods is close to zero compared with physical goods.
But I don't understand what this has todo with Apple charging X for some goods and services and 0 for others. I mean, whether a business as X amount of marginal costs or 0 its irrelevant for any retailer. In the end the retail gets a fee for the ability to sell the good or service. Distribution of the good is sometimes part of that service but not necessarily.
I personally think that the explanation is far more simple. I imagine ... "Hey we can make a store to sell apps. After all people need to apps in our OS, its our OS and device that enables them. Better still, we can make it so that no one can sell apps but us, all will need install them through u$. Yeah that sounds like great business. Great, we can increase the value by also distributing, management ... yeah ... great. Hey, but what about free apps? If we have free apps customers will flock. Humm, well free apps don't pay ... But there will be situations were businesses offer their app for free and charge for digital goods or services through the app. For instance eBooks, videos, whatever. Yeah, if they are making money we should get some. Ok, we can set a fixed fee for the app in those cases. Fixed fee? Nah, why don't we charge a percentage fee for whatever is provided through the app? Yeah, we can get a lot more money from that. We can also make a narrative around it with some clout, after all as I said our OS is enabling the App hence the sale. Wait, what if the app is selling potatoes, taxi rides, and so. Humm, that is a story that its harder to sell. Why after all, our OS is enabling the app, hence the ability of the app to sell, we just charge a commission for the sale we also don't deliver the eBooks or Videos either? Humm, I think we will have problems if we start charging for the in app sale of groceries and so on, that may jeopardize the entire narrative around us charging for the sale of eBooks, Videos and other stuff... we just say that we don't charge for the sale of physical goods or services, Yeah, that is it. Maybe later we can come back to that when context allows us to have a story to tell with more clout. Yeah."
In other words, for me about clout of the narrative, nothing else. From technical point of view, charging a fee for the in app sale of eBook is no different from charging a fee for the sale of plane or movie ticket. Heck the later is now digital even. The difference is that either there wouldn't be apps selling neither of this in iOS and many many others, making the smartphone less useful hence less popular. But Apple had this vision that the iPhone could be the personal hub for everything ... driving more device sales. Imagine supermarkets, banks and all that jazz with apps on the App Store. Making it free removed barriers for those situations removes an adoption barrier.
Furthermore, its precisely because the marginal costs of the digital is close to 0, that digital businesses don't usually need retailers to sell they goods and services, neither do customers. Just look around what is happening outside the App Store. Plenty of successful businesses, large and small direct selling to their clients. In terms of Marketing the App Stores do almost nothing. The bulk of Marketing Costs lays on the channels outside the App Stores .. Google Ad-words, YouTube influences, trade shows, so on and so forth. Most people find their Apps by Googling or though the Developer website. Yes, you could also pay for promotion in the App Store if you please.
So if you ask me, I think the App Store distributes and provides/sells apps to iOS device owners. That all they should charge for ... the distribution and sale of the App ... if a developer wants to provide it for free, they should bank the digital distribution cost and pay Apple for the service, much like they do for instance with their web apps. So charging for any goods and or services that the business provide through their App is overreaching. Another thing is the royalty that Apple may want to charge for the use of their SDKs ... and heck in that respect they might be the most expensive on the planet unless you provide your app and service for free in which case you only have a business if around harvesting data and selling Ads. You know, TikTok's, Facebook, WhatApp and all that stuff.
Cheers.
