Just to put this in perspective, credit card fees are around 2.5%.

So, you think Apple should collect 2.5-7.5%!(after covering CC fees) to confer the infrastructure required to run the app store (people, servers, office, etc)?

If Apple can't make a profit skimming 7.5% surcharge on billions of sales then they should get out of business of running an App Store and let someone else do it.

In a free market situation someone will build a thriving business with such economics.

Monopoly power over iOS users is the only reason Apple gets away with murder (i.e. skimming 30%).

It is a free market make your own OS and do whatever. Don't buy an iPhone etc.

For perspective, how much does Android charge developers for using the play store ?

Apple gets paid per unit of value that changes hands. What do you imagine their actual costs are for automatically vetting a 1 dollar game and transmitting it to a million users over one year.

S3 storage / bandwidth prices according to google is $0.021 per GB per month for storage and $0.085 per GB of transfer so approx 3c for storage $8500 for transfer if we pretend that apple has to pay so much. In reality its probably much lower.

They would earn 75000 by taking 7.5% so nearly 9x the cost of executing so one would imagine that could easily cover any overhead.

In practice the revenue generated 26.5 billion for developers and 11.5 billion for apple in 2017. Even 2.5% would be almost a billion dollars 7.5% would be almost 3 billion dollars. I'm betting that apple can run an app store for 1-3 billion in a competitive market.

Luckily for investors, Apple doesn’t charge on a cost-plus model.

Do credit card companies not have people, servers, and offices?

they are offering more than just credit card processing.

How often do you purchase an app? How often do you purchase everything else?

Sure. Not sure why you think that wouldn't cover their expenses and then some.

Im sure creditcard fees are lower for companies with billions of transactions like Apple.

And yes i think my ballpark number is fair. This appstore market is a billion dollar industry. 10% of that is certainly more than enough to cover the expenses you mentioned. Believe me, if Apple had proper competition in smartphone market the fees would have been closer to my number. They are simply dodging taxes in Ireland, building t a trillion dollar fund, ripping of developers by abusing defacto monopoly, selling snake oil privacy first speeches while bending over for communist China. Fking sick and tired. I dont like regulations by gov, but with greedy no-longer innovating corporates we really need them

Do you really think "people, servers, office" cost that much?