Why be so snarky and dismissive? Plumbers or electrical lines aren't middlemen between producers and consumers. Retail stores and app stores both deal with:
- taking a large number of small payments from geographically distributed customers (with different tax situations), taking a cut, and producing a simpler bulk income stream to the producer
- having some filter on quality of the products that are offered to the consumer, and providing a low-friction way for customers to exchange money for them
- dealing with refunds, differing methods of payments, discounts, etc. (handling some of the customer nonsense that comes from dealing with the public, in short)
Are there things that physical stores do that an app store doesn't? Of course. But if retail takes a 50% cut and the app store takes 30%, well, that's instructive, isn't it? That sounds reasonable given that they play similar roles but with less "physical stuff" to do. But if retail takes 10% and here we have the app store taking 30%, that's even more instructive and that would support the claim that the app store is "ludicrous". I'm not looking to compare 29% and 30%, I'm evaluating the claim that 30% is an outrageous sum. Outrageous compared to what?
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For the record, it annoys the ever-living hell out of me that ebay keeps taking more and more, but from what I've seen, its competitors are in the same ballpark. Is Apple worth twice that for the app store, probably not. But now we have a frame of reference: it's about 2x ebay, not, say, 10x
- taking a large number of small payments from geographically distributed customers (with different tax situations), taking a cut, and producing a simpler bulk income stream to the producer
- having some filter on quality of the products that are offered to the consumer, and providing a low-friction way for customers to exchange money for them
- dealing with refunds, differing methods of payments, discounts, etc. (handling some of the customer nonsense that comes from dealing with the public, in short)
Are there things that physical stores do that an app store doesn't? Of course. But if retail takes a 50% cut and the app store takes 30%, well, that's instructive, isn't it? That sounds reasonable given that they play similar roles but with less "physical stuff" to do. But if retail takes 10% and here we have the app store taking 30%, that's even more instructive and that would support the claim that the app store is "ludicrous". I'm not looking to compare 29% and 30%, I'm evaluating the claim that 30% is an outrageous sum. Outrageous compared to what?
--
For the record, it annoys the ever-living hell out of me that ebay keeps taking more and more, but from what I've seen, its competitors are in the same ballpark. Is Apple worth twice that for the app store, probably not. But now we have a frame of reference: it's about 2x ebay, not, say, 10x