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.
Re:You download the app and it doesn’t work
by realtalk_sp on Friday June 19, 2020 @07:53PM
(#23580145)
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.
Re:You download the app and it doesn’t work
by realtalk_sp on Friday June 19, 2020 @07:56PM
(#23580162)
I think the overarching point that's emerging here is that those profits are a consequence of monopolistic rent-seeking...
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.