zlacker

>>gorman+(OP)
" Modern cars regularly send basic data about vehicle components, their safety status and service schedules to car manufacturers, and mobile phones work in very similar ways." -Google

This is a beautiful quote because it is an example of one industry's bad behavior leading to another industry's bad behavior, upon which the first industry then users the second's similarity to justify themselves. Cars only started doing this because phones made it normal. It's wrong in both cases.

It's similar to when Apple defended it's 30% store cut by claiming it's an "industry standard"... specifically, an industry standard that Apple established.

>>ocdtre+e3
This may be pedantic, but Steam was collecting its 30% long before the App Store opened. Thought maybe that was inspired by Apple's cut of music revenues in the iTunes Store.

>>Alexan+N5
I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf. I have no such option if I want to buy an iOS app from a store or the developers themselves.

Steam also don't engage in anti-competitive behavior and prevent billions of people from using alternative game distribution methods like Apple does.

What we need is real competition in the mobile app distribution market to determine whether or not that 30% is actually fair, efficient and competitive. As it stands, there is no competition in mobile app distribution.

>>heavys+3o
That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading. Plenty of phones come with 2 or 3 different app stores from the network, vendor and Google. The fact is consumers like app stores, they like consolidation because it makes it simpler for them and a lot of them like the benefits they get from a walled garden. Developers like consolidation too, which is why they have converged on the Play Store en masse on Android. These things benefit them, and the vast, vast majority appreciate those benefits more than they appreciate the benefits of managing multiple competing stores and side loading downloaded APKs.

You can't magic those preferences away. Even if you forced iOS to become an Android clone with multiple app stores and sideloading you can't force people to like those things. You'd just be giving an extra option to a very small subset of techies who have Android now to do that on already anyway. The market has spoken and it likes nice simple well managed choices because that's what the people want.

Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve?

Maybe these stores converged on 30% because it's a nice round number and a roughly 1:2 split makes intuitive sense. Consoles, music stores, Steam, mobile app stores, they've all circled around about that number for a very long time. Some have tried around 20/80 to grab market share but it never worked, Nintendo tried 35/65 for a while before going to 30/70. In the end it's natural that competitive forces will tend to a convergence.