Again, we can easily imagine the end point of all this by looking at Mac Apps. There is an Apple Mac App Store and one can generally buy all of the same apps direct from the developer websites and often through third party stores and even "10 apps for a $1" bundles.
Ever seen a "10 iDevice apps for a $1" offer from a BundleHunt or other third party entity? Ever see a big iDevice App sale on Amazon or Walmart website?
That's kind of rhetorical because it isn't possible, yet.
Competition pressures pricing DOWN. It "just works." It's fundamental to a benefit of Capitalism that works for us consumers. Not all of the system must revolve around benefits only for sellers.
Competition does, but regulations that try to increase competition don't necessarily accomplish that. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters for the consumer is have I saved money.
But even competition has challenges. All those "price match guarantees" are a way to keep prices higher as it signals "we won't start a price war but if you do we'll react and we'll all make less money. Your call." Notice haw many don't include sellers who have lower costs and thus would trigger the refund if they honored their price?
#1 didn't really create competition... only more money for the developer within the same "company store" transaction. App developers need to feel competition pressures too.
It's about choice for the user and developer as to where to buy and sell. The competition is created by sellers choosing the other option.
#2 is to TBD. But the popular argument at 15%-30% is justified because of how expensive it is to host, distribute and process apps and in-app transactions is most of it, I can't rationalize the same applied to the Mac app side of things. How are direct app sales from developers for less and or "10 apps for a $1" bundles able to be profitable? That's a rhetorical question. Obviously, that popular spin that it takes 15%-30% to run the store is untrue... and Apple fighting this so passionately is NOT to preserve barely "breaking even" on store transactions.
My justification for it is not what it costs, because costs only impact margin, not price. Price is set by how much value a consumer gets for the product; a you price accordingly. Louis Vuitton doesn't pay anywhere near their selling price for those luxury handbags made in Italy by cheap labor. I'd be surprised if the cost to make one was more than 10% - 20% of the sales price.
As for the bundles, I suspect the only real money maker is the bundler and the junk apps getting a few pennies, which is more than they are getting already. There are fewer and fewer of what I call a good app in those bundles, and when they are it isn't in a 1 for 10 bundle but a "Pick your bundle" with varying prices.
If there's little to no money in this, Apple wouldn't be fighting it so hard. It being so, so lucrative in being the one & only "Company Store" drives this fight.
Of course, the fight is all about the big money between Apple, EPIC, Spotify et.al. Each wants a bigger slice of the pie and not share it after Apple baked the pie.
Nevertheless, in spite of my response, the test is already in motion coming up on 6 months now throughout the entire EU. We can all watch that test "cell" to see how much of a (virus/trojan/crime syndicate/etc) disaster it has been for that enormous market in the last 6 months for those who believe that nonsense... and we can keep watching to see if pricing rises, stays the same or is pressured down by more competition. The rest of the world can just watch & see reality instead of speculating with personal opinion.
Yes, It will be interesting to see. I wonder what impact it will have while I am living in the EU with US bought phone and a German App Store.
