Sure, but wealth distribution is a dangerous road to go down.
I don’t really mean to go down that road. But it its being distributed every day. According to stats does not look like its balanced, especially in the US as far as the western world is concerned. How to balance it, don’t know,
Just put this into the equation considering the blank statement that its better than any other. It is as dangerous to assume that cannot be better.
Cut the costs at each stage opf distribution are hidden in almost all sales. If you buy a book you do not get a breakdown of what the store got, the distributor, publisher, etc. You see a price and decide if it is worth it. Why should digital be different?
In a serious conversation one cannot factor out the difference between analog and digital marketplace and justify every measure with what they have in common. The fact is that we are still learning bout the impact of the digital services. It doesn’t just speeds or make things more agile, it also concentrates.
A developer should already factor Apple's cut into their price. They know how much money they need, or would like, to make, set a price so that they get that after the cut. Anecdotally, when I set a price I decide how much I want to get, knowing others will get a cut of the final amount is ultimately charged.
This does not really address the point presented. Wether or not a Shop should be entitled to charge for goods or services not provided because it has billions of users. For instance, in the analog world, the cost of delivery is factored out. So the idea presented by me is not that original. In the digital space, the cost delivery seams to be residual in comparison so not worth factoring it out, but I guess it not residual because it seams that when we talk about the 30% it becomes an important argument to justify it.
Whether you call it a tax or not, it is simply a cost of doing business to access a customer base.
In some “underdeveloped” markets paying people "on the side to" get access to “places” is also just part of the cost of doing business. Meaning the cost of doing business by itself does not make it legit. There are rules. And rules change as we learn.
Fair enough. For me, the way to determine that is if the consumer is forced to pay more for an item under the system.
As I’ve said, factoring out the App Store cost in relationship to alternatives would be like betting against themselves in this market. More so because they charge less by other means. I think it would benefit both the customer, the store and the dev if schemes like this were not necessary for devs to minimize the cost of sales. So it dies hurt the customer.
The difficulty of these discussions is that when people drive comparison with the analog retail space and produce blank, usually cheery pick practices when the entire value chain should be compared. This along with blanket like statement about economics.
I honestly doupt a analog retailer could get away legally with certain things that seam to norm and accepted in the digital space. I mean, forcing a shared revenue on sales of goods or services not provided by the App Store based on the fact that it owns keys of access to the devs app it's a bit weird. A discussion that you totally avoided.
Here is another one. Apple is enticing developers to opt for a subscription model. The fact is that is a play against App Store customers. Why?
Well there is an increasing number of app with In App Purchases. Most of them I encounter a subscription is presented. That cost is not presented before download. Its just says "In app purchase ..." . Meaning it is not presented unless the customer downloads the app. Something that is required for instance to analog retailers,
to have its cost tagged when presenting the product. A number of scams have already been identifies, all because of this practice of not presenting the In App prices upfront.
Apps that are not more than Markdown notepads with a subscription model jump from 3.99 euros for a one off buy to 3.99 euros a month, 48 euros a year, because one can than synch a bunch of files across devices.though a service they already payed for ... iCloud ... Note that 48 euros a year is half the price of a Office 365 subscription ... for a better notepad. This is not that good for customers, does not foster innovation, its lazy.
I think that this would end up hurting quality and competition, in the end the population served by the store. This measure seams to be in place to drive the prices up while introducing less transparency in the actual cost of acquisition. What is strange is this practice seams to be empowered by the store owner for the benefit of the customer and the quality of service of the store ... is it?
I think that 30% share over the devs revenue has something to do with it.
Cheers.
Pretty standard rate to be fair on credit cards for people with a less than good history...
