Hoping someone will chime in and share ringtone royalty rates back when they were selling by the millions. I’d bet labels got under 50% and artists got basically nothing.

the iPhone is a PDA. There's 20 years of PDAs before iPhone. There was no price to put an app on my 1998 Windows CE PDA, nor my Sony Clie, nor my Dell Axim. Just install the software same as PC. The software vendors had the option to sell direct, go through a distributor, a publisher, various stores, etc..

Phones were an entirely different world.

For instance, Verizon was sued for disabling the ability of phones on their network to transfer photos using Bluetooth, because they wanted to charge you money for a simple file transfer.

https://www.eweek.com/mobile/verizon-wireless-users-sue-over...

Hah, I had a Verizon flip phone around that time. If I wanted to change the home screen background on my phone, I couldn't do it via BT without Verizon adding a charge to my monthly bill.

I ended up using that phone to take a picture of the background I wanted. Verizon didn't charge for setting wallpapers using pictures taken with the phone!

I switched to a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone (Samsung Blackjack) and it was so liberating. Sync music via USB! Set custom ringtones using your own MP3s and not whatever the Ringtone store was selling for $2.99.

I think there's a lot of truth to this take. Pre-iPhone phones were a completely different category of phone. They ran limited, special-purpose operating systems. Smartphones of today are pocket computers that just happen to be able to make phone calls.

And yes, they connect to a wireless carrier's network. But I can also connect my laptop to a wireless carrier's network by buying a USB dongle and a SIM card. I'm certainly not expecting anyone to pay 30% of their revenue to sell me an app on my laptop.

Also consider the iPod Touch. It is much closer to being a PDA than a phone, despite the fact that it's essentially an iPhone without a cellular modem.

>Pre-iPhone phones were a completely different category of phone. They ran limited, special-purpose operating systems.

That doesn't resemble anything like my memory of the time. I had multiple general purpose windows mobile phones before iPhones existed. It wasn't limited and it could install apps. Neither Microsoft not the carrier took 30%.