Google has shown a marked decrease in interest in the whole Android thing. The latest Google phone didn’t even try to compete. Will they be supporting Android three years from now?
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Google to Lower Play Store Commission to 15% on First $1 Million Earned by Developers Per Year
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Right but it’s based on annual income. It seems like Apple engineered it to be way more complicated just so a company like Epic couldn’t possibly benefit. Under Google’s plan big and small alike are ’taxed’ at 15% on their first million.
But you'll then be charged 30% on next years sales for "just" going over the limit.
If sales remained at a constant level you essentially lose $150k for that 1 cent extra in earnings over 1m. That could be the equivalent of hiring a lot of extra staff or improving infrastructure.
Your sales would have to increase firstly by 15% to break even and depending on the amount of users you may need it to keep up with additional support demands. e.g. a $2 app ... you might need to deal with 75k more customers just to make up the shortfall. Thats alot more work for the same amount of cash.
Getting a 150k extra a year would barely impact their coffee budget. And they'd still be lawyering up over it anyway.
15% on the first million makes perfect sense in the big picture.
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What would keep you buying the phones for so long if it was really a POS? It doesn’t make sense. Again, not saying it’s equivalent to iOS but your original statement was heavily exaggerated.
Because I can afford it and like to try different things. And like to form an educated opinion on something instead of just others’ take on it.
Mentioned on another site are two differences between Apple and Google: 1. Apple charges 15% until $1,000,000 payout, that is up to about $1,176,000 revenue. Google charges 15% up to $1,000,000 revenue or $850,000 payout. On the other hand, Google charges 30% for any revenue over the limit, while with Apple the rebate is gone completely if you exceed the limit.
So Apple is better one way, Google is better another way.
So Apple is better one way, Google is better another way.
To all the morons who keep talking about Apple’s greed and praising Google for this... I am reminding you that Apple already has this policy in place and has since last year. Apple takes 15% of App Store proceeds for developers making less than $1M/year.
edit- I see others have addressed it, guess I should’ve read further.
edit- I see others have addressed it, guess I should’ve read further.
It’s a lot more nuanced than that.
Apple’s value-add here is the provision of an App Store that
1) increases people’s confidence in the safety and quality of the apps located inside
2) makes it easier to make purchases (iTunes, Face ID / Touch ID authentication). Lower incidence of piracy means more people purchasing apps from you (and actually paying for them), rather than downloading APKs for them.
3) Apple also provides a lot of SDKs that improve the functionality of iOS apps, making them work better for the end user.
4) Apple has also aggregated the best spenders. My ISP doesn’t provide any of that extra value-add.
All this makes iOS customers more open to purchasing apps in the App Store. Therefore helping to sell more apps compared to if the App Store hadn’t exist, and customers had to download apps from various websites the way we do on macOS.
What Apple has done here is help grow the overall pie. We can debate whether that’s worth 30%, but my point is that Apple is doing a fair bit to facilitate that transaction between the developer and the end user, and they are not just collecting a commission for nothing. Apple is actually providing something of value here.
This also means that operating an App Store also costs a lot of money, which Apple offsets using the revenue it collects. It’s not reasonable to expect that Apple absorbs all the costs of doing so (it would be like expecting a departmental store to display your goods for free, at zero benefit to itself), and $99 per developer per year only goes so far in covering the costs incurred.
$150k is neither LOTS of extra staff or a meaningful infrastructure increase, though. And, I would imagine that anyone that breaks through the $500,000 barrier VERY likely has a hit on their hands and will blow past $1 million by quite a bit more than $150k. Remember the rationale is that the VAST majority of developers do not have the luxury of the problem of hitting $1 million.
So, it’s very likely that for EVERY developer that’s seriously losing sleep concerned about getting JUST over $1 million… 100% of those will NEVER have that problem to deal with.
It’s also possible that there are more developers earning over $1 million in the iOS App Store compared to the google play store. So perhaps Google can afford to appear more generous with their terms because they don’t have as much to lose here financially compared to Apple.
But then your opinion is it's been the same POS for 5 years, yet you still insisted on buying multiple Android phones? I think you missed a few things, but to each their own.
Google's way means I can operate a business per app with little or no oversight and game the system to keep in the 15% cut. Apple's way means I can't game the system as I have one business that has been vetted and approved. Now the way that lets me cheat is more profitable, but I wouldn't want to game it. I betcha other companies will game the Google Play Store and launch each new game/app as its own business so that even a company earning 10's of millions can act like a start up.
It’s why certain car enthusiasts top off their collection with something silly like a Reliant Robin. Introduce some variety. Not sure what you’re implying with “missed a few things” but at least when I say that they’re crap I am saying that from experience.
cheers
Regarding items 1-3 I think there can be a debate as far as the best way to charge developers for all of that. Maybe the yearly developer fee is more than $99 and is based on the level of support Apple provides the developer, what it costs them to be in the store, bandwith etc. Right now the App Store fee seems less about what it costs to run the App Store and more about your item 4 - Apple thinks it has the best customers and if you want access to them you have to give Apple a cut to get access to them. Unless of course you’re a big enough developer with a product Apple really needs then you can be put in a special category where Apple gets nothing. My quibble is around whether Apple is bringing these customers to developers or not. I can’t remember the last app I downloaded because of Apple. Most apps on my phone I found out about elsewhere. I’d love to know what percentage of app downloads are because of Apple promotion inside/outside the App Store. Again if the argument is items 1-3 are what are brining consumers to developers I think there are other ways to account for that than taking 30% of someone’s revenue stream.
The iOS App Store brings in more money compared to the google play store despite the latter having a larger user base. I would like to think that Apple is doing something right here.
Monument Valley Team Reveals The Cost And Reward Of Making A Hit iOS Game | TechCrunch
Games and the formula that leads to their success can be a bit of a mystery, perhaps more so on mobile. One of 2014's big hits, both in terms of critical and audience success, was Monument Valley by ustwogames. The isometric 3D puzzler was breathtaking in terms of its visual design and had nice...
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For example, the developer of the "monument valley" app shared his earnings some time back, and the amount of money he made off iOS dwarves what he earned on Android (80%!). He also noted that Android sported a 95% piracy rate, which means that the majority of android users are simply not simply paying for content (at least not his).
Granted, this article is from 6 years ago. Maybe things are different now.
I do agree that the current App Store is not a perfect system (companies like google and Facebook pay Apple no revenue beyond that $100 developer fee), despite being multi-billion dollar companies, but I don't have a better solution to propose either. At best, I can only liken this system to that of taxation. Those who can pay more, pay more, which goes back into propping up the system that elevates everybody.
I have also crunched some numbers of my own some time back, and with the caveat that this is at best an educated guess, I estimate that it takes a 20% cut for the apple App Store to break even. So while this does mean that there is room for Apple to lower their commission rate, it also suggests that there isn't as much wriggle room for negotiation as some make it out to be. Certainly not 15% across the board. I feel Apple is entitled to a little bit of profit for their efforts as well.
I do also agree that I am discovering new apps from other sources these days, mainly the Macstories newsletter which I am currently subscribed to. That may be something worth exploring in greater detail.
I recall when the Microsoft had their Windows Phone and its AppStore, they wanted to be like Apple so bad that they mimicked the $99 annual registration and 30% take on app sales right off the bat.
Big players eventually stopped development and that was the first sign of trouble. Microsoft reached out to the community as to how they could entice developers to try Windows Phone. I recall them giving out free or discounted Windows Phones and even had decent tools to easily port their apps to it. As a proponent of Windows Phone back then as well as healthy competition among the platforms, I remember loudly voicing out that they should implement a tiered system like what Google is doing now, but even more aggressive - start at a 5% take for the first $100K in revenue, increase to 15% at $500K or gradually increase as the developer's revenue increases until it peaks at 30%.
Of course, Microsoft decided to retain the flat 30% take, and just waive or discount the $99 annual fee instead. Fast forward to now, and the Windows Phone platform is dead and even the Windows AppStore is replete with garbage apps.
The 15% cut from Google could help its developers make better apps, provide healthier competition between the platforms, and maybe even get Apple to drop their rates to compete. Ok, maybe not that last part, but that's wishful thinking.
Big players eventually stopped development and that was the first sign of trouble. Microsoft reached out to the community as to how they could entice developers to try Windows Phone. I recall them giving out free or discounted Windows Phones and even had decent tools to easily port their apps to it. As a proponent of Windows Phone back then as well as healthy competition among the platforms, I remember loudly voicing out that they should implement a tiered system like what Google is doing now, but even more aggressive - start at a 5% take for the first $100K in revenue, increase to 15% at $500K or gradually increase as the developer's revenue increases until it peaks at 30%.
Of course, Microsoft decided to retain the flat 30% take, and just waive or discount the $99 annual fee instead. Fast forward to now, and the Windows Phone platform is dead and even the Windows AppStore is replete with garbage apps.
The 15% cut from Google could help its developers make better apps, provide healthier competition between the platforms, and maybe even get Apple to drop their rates to compete. Ok, maybe not that last part, but that's wishful thinking.
Firstly, that very much depends what country your dev's and support staff are located in.
But lets just for arguments sake say you have a one-hit-wonder App popular for the first couple of months of the year, and just about go over the threshold. You'd be hit by the 30% the following year. Your bread and butter subsequent apps might only do 500,000 yearly but you'll be taking a major revenue hit for that one "big one".
I'm not saying it has happened, and maybe it's unlikely to happen, but it would sure be re-assuring to estimate how much you will be in the hole for in the future IF one of your apps decides to go viral, even for a short while. The Google model on the other hand addresses this.
I’d agree that it’s very unlikely to happen. We have information supporting this from Apple and Google, that it’s unlikely that anyone hits $1,000,000 to start with. Of those few that have been reported make it over $1,000,000, they make it well over that such that the difference between 15 and 30% isn’t going to curtail the spending required for the upkeep of their enterprise. So, the Google model addresses something… that’s highly unlikely to occur. Especially on a platform with hundreds of millions of customers that have shown a strong ability to pay for applications and services.