This is my big problem with it too. The cost of maintaining the app store and the search is the same no matter what the app is. It should be a fixed fee.

On the other hand the argument is that all the $0 apps are being subsidized by the paid apps, so they went percentage based so that the cheap apps didn't have a huge fee. It would mean the cheapest paid apps in the app store would be a lot more to absorb the fixed cost, or if they shared it evenly, then there would be no free apps.

You still have to pay $100-$300 to publish a completely free app.

But not per user.

I mean, it would relatively easy to say 30% up to a maximum of $5, or something along those lines.

Apple's cost to maintain this ecosystem can't be anything close to the insane $50B in App Store revenue they hauled in last year.

I'm well aware it isn't close to what they make, but they are entitled to their profits too.

And users are entitled to better app stores. In other words, users are entitled to chose between businesses according to their abilities in utilizing their profits to deliver more value.

If there were competing app stores available on iOS, then we could say they are really entitled to that profit. But we don't know how much of this profit reflects the value they brought versus the rent they were able to get due to gatekeeping the only bridge into iOS-land. So no, we can't for sure say they are entitled to the entirety of that profit.

I think the overarching point that's emerging here is that those profits are a consequence of monopolistic rent-seeking...

You’ve seen through it, congrats: they are pricing based on value, not cost.

McDonalds, Nike and Gillette do this too. Hey, maybe you’re doing it yourself: is your salary really the cheapest way for you to produce the work you get paid for?

Do you price your subscriptions purely by the marginal expense of serving the content/service to another customer? Or do you price them according to what the market will pay for your product?

Totally different. The goal here is to maximize my profit and minimize my expenses.

Then don't be surprised that Apple works to maximize their profits too. Which neatly answers the question why Apple does pricing like that.

It's not different, both are price discrimination. If they cut the price for the expensive products' apps, they'll have to raise it for the inexpensive products' apps. If the inexpensive products can't afford it, they won't have an app.

Do you think that isn't the goal for Apple?

I assume it’s percentage-based to allow for free apps (which are an important part of the overall ecosystem).

How do you allow free apps but still collect money? Maybe you could make a distinction between free and paid apps, and charge a flat fee to the paid apps, but then people would just make their apps free and process their payments separately anyway; essentially the same problem you hit with the 30% fee.

this is a salient point, fixed rate would make much more sense