Apple needs developers far less now than it did ten or fifteen years ago. They have been very successful at commoditising 3rd party software.
Well it’s a minimum baseline kind of thing: I use a specific app for skiing and biking but for my needs it’s just fine for hiking, running, IIT. Some others may want specialized apps for those — great! But my needs there are pretty trivial, and actually t acted as the “gateway drug” for me to buy the specialized apps I did.
Say I make a training platform that does some interaction (one-to-many as is quite typical of training) and also handles the payments as well as tracking etc.
As I understand the rules "I" will have to give 30% to Apple in that case, but if my business model is fine with say 5%, won't she (the trainer) effectively pay the rest?
I spend a fair amount of time on fitness and haven't found any tracking app that floats my boat -- Apple's being especially awful from a UX perspective in my opinion -- and I'd really like to think that if I come up with a better idea, I won't have to subsidize Tim Cook's latest vertical takeover with 30% of my indie revenue, or worse: my customers' indie revenue.
At the risk of veering off topic, I think Apple is making a huge mistake trying to capture as much app-related revenue as possible. Passionate developers are a big part of what enables their industry-leading margins on all that shiny hardware. 30% is fair, or at least "normal," for some things, but trying to get it from my personal trainer is beyond the pale.