> You mean aside from bandwidth, a marketplace of literally hundreds of millions of ready buyers for your chosen platform, all with credit cards conveniently stored for ease of purchasing your product?

For subscriptions at least the bandwidth is funded by the publisher. Yes you get access to lots of customers, but you have to charge them the same as ones you sell yourself and if you want to have an app you are required to let your users purchase from within it. It adds up to 30% being ridiculously high. If it was opt-in and/or non price matching I don't think many would care, but as it stands it's a huge tax that if enforced will mean the end to many of the killer apps of iOS.

We're talking 30% here. You think 30% is a just price for that service? Lets not forget that you still have to pay taxes on the remaining income. If there was a startup here on HN whose business model was 30% of your revenues for hosting of your app + credit card information storage (usually done via 3rd party PCI compliant service) it wouldn't be taken very seriously.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but 30% of your revenue for that service is absurd.

Man, I still remember (and everyone who was even cursorily interested in mobile development should) when carriers not only controlled the conduit but the device and the marketplace. You had to either apply for the privilege of being in their "market" or had some form of marketing agreement with them (iow, you had to have a big stick to play that game). Even then, carriers pocketed up to 75% of sales. It was disgusting.

30% is like a godsend in comparison. And, with competition heating up with Android and Amazon, app stores will either compete on payouts or cartelize and price-fix.