The lack of competition and alternative options is the core issue here. Free market competition will figure it out, that's the simple answer.
One developer might be operating on effectively infinite margins and opt to stay in the Apple app store for visibility and most familiar experience.
Another might participate in an alternative app store that charges a review fee, a distribution fee but doesn't charge anything for in-app purchases except baseline payment processing fees.
Yet another might be operating on razor-thin margins and/or doesn't need to participate in an app store for visibility, they might sell their app directly through their website and roll their own payments and distribution.
> Stripe (one of the most popular payment processors) will take 9% from a 5$ purchase just for payment processing.
We might as well treat this as 0 when discussing alternative options since it's an inescapable fact of selling things anywhere (cash and crypto aside)
> The lack of competition and alternative options is the core issue here. Free market competition will figure it out, that's the simple answer.
You know what? I actually agree with this! If alternative stores would really offer competition, then it's indeed something worth investigating. The problem is that I doubt that we will see alternative stores much. We will have a Meta store that sells FB-relevant services, an Epic store that sells Fortnite, an MS store that sells MS Office experience, an Adobe store that sells Adobe subscriptions, etc. Basically big corps making their own bubbles to improve margins.
If all these stores are regulated instead (transparent rules for all, no corp-only stores, strict privacy regulations), sure, I'm all for it! But that's not where the suggestions are going, so far most of the comments are along the lines "Apple should not be allowed to do this, everyone else should be allowed to do everything". Unfortunately, many "fairness initiatives" end up with some other big corp creating a soft monopoly (just look at google who de facto control the web standards just because their engine has 90% of the market share)
One developer might be operating on effectively infinite margins and opt to stay in the Apple app store for visibility and most familiar experience.
Another might participate in an alternative app store that charges a review fee, a distribution fee but doesn't charge anything for in-app purchases except baseline payment processing fees.
Yet another might be operating on razor-thin margins and/or doesn't need to participate in an app store for visibility, they might sell their app directly through their website and roll their own payments and distribution.
> Stripe (one of the most popular payment processors) will take 9% from a 5$ purchase just for payment processing.
We might as well treat this as 0 when discussing alternative options since it's an inescapable fact of selling things anywhere (cash and crypto aside)