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Agree on everything except patching? What does Google patch on say a netflix app?

30% is ridiculous for Apple and Google. It's an arbitrary number that they could get away with when the Appstore came out nine years ago and everyone ran with it ever since.

I don't know what a fair amount is. But I doubt it's in the two digits.



They provide auto-update polling and patching functionality.


Fair is probably less than credit card co’s for base payment functionality, i.e. < 2.5%, plus some for editorial, autoupdates, decent admin UI, review.


You're forgetting that these stores act as merchants of record. They are not just payment processors. They handle VAT internationally. They do all the billing and compliance for you.

You just have one large customer in one country instead of thousands/millions in many different jurisdictions each with its own tax and consumer protection laws. That's worth more than 2.5% but it's not worth 30%.

I would say fair is somewhere between 5% and 10%, considering they also provide some distribution infrastructure on top of payments, billing, taxes and compliance.


If 30% is ridiculous, what to say about J2ME, Symbian, Blackberry and PocketPC rates of former operators stores?


Can't speak for BB, but J2ME, Symbian, and PocketPC never had any centralized store that everything had to go through.

Well, I guess Symbian got N-Gage and the Ovi Store towards the end, but they never tried to lock it down against third party sources.


No the stores were run by the carriers. Sprint and Verizon had an App Store before the iPhone was introduced where they sold a third party J2ME apps. Those carriers took a 70% cut.


I suppose it might have been regional, but that was never the case here. You would just download the jars (or cabs) directly from the developer. The only cut would have been the ~2% credit card processing fee.


True, but my point was how much they charged developers for being there, not how many were available.


Wat? My point was that they weren't even in the equation. Who cares what they charged if everyone went straight to the source instead?


The source being the carriers shop and scummy online shops listed on newspapers getting paid via SMS codes, which one would need to pitch before they would even consider taking their royalties.


No, the source being the developer's website. Not everything has to be a walled garden.


Somehow I lived a different alternative universe regarding J2ME, Symbian, BlackBerry, PocketPC app stores.


I guess it may have been a regional thing. Or maybe you're thinking of Qualcomm's BREW?


Qualcomm wasn't available in Europe.


Well, the install base is way bigger for Android, and the general state of patching in 2019 is far more frequent than it was when older platforms were operating.


Hence why it is way cheaper than it used to be back then.

When Apple announced 30% cut, mobile devs where cheering, because many providers were charging way above 50%.




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