I was worried about this. I'm small potatoes but we make an open source app that can connect to self-hosted or paid-hosted services. So if they could have forced WP, they could have easily forced me too, now there is a baseline set.
To even get approved we had to make sure the App doesn't offer any sign-up or even billing info at all. And still went round and round for approval explaining how paid services, if any, are completely outside Apple realm.
This is so weird. I've removed and added in-app subscriptions to my app multiple times and never had any problems getting it approved. Even now my app is redirecting users to my website to purchase subscriptions, and never had an issue getting past the review process.
Your post here exemplifies why apple's behaviour is so problematic - you're left trying to adhere to a set of rules that even Apple can't manage to enforce consistently and correctly, facing the risk of having to pay an unexpected 30% tax on sales (and effectively have to raise prices accordingly).
Hopefully this logic is enough to get Apple in bother during their antitrust suits and Investigations - it seems quite ironic they are getting into scuffles 2 days before the first hearing in the epic case is scheduled (iirc - for the restraining motion).
It would be nice if small businesses and innovators could get on with innovating, rather than ensuring they comply with arcane rent seeking behaviour by a giant that won't let you distribute your app without offering them their cut.
Google is little better though here - their old Android market terms even titled a clause "non-competition". Unsurprisingly this has disappeared - I assume this doesn't comply with their "avoiding antitrust" dictionary of banned phrases.
It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market.
If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax.
It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ignorant to the realities of customer acquisition. Apple and Google hand you customers on a silver platter for the bargain, consistent price of 30%. Whereas as a startup I have to pay much higher to Facebook and Google for PPC ads.
How so? The only "help" that an app store can give you is that your app can show up in search result in the app store.
But that's only a problem because customers are used to searching in that app store (and that's because it's the only one on the platform).
If there was no app store, customers would search on the web, and it turns out that Google Web Search and Bing don't refuse to link to sites that don't give them 30% commission on sales.
Of course PPC ads cost money, but obviously app stores don't let you be a top result on arbitrary searches for free (since obviously that's a limited resource, so it's impossible to do that), so that seems a spurious comparison.
Because it doesn't work by you creating a web page and then it instantly appearing in the 1st SERP. It requires significant amounts of capital in content marketing and SEO. And for competitive categories e.g. most apps you would need tens to hundreds of thousands of investment to rank.
And Apple and Google publicise a lot of the well made apps either via their promotional articles or via app groups. And their search is just for apps so you aren't competing with all of the non-mobile apps like you do with Google.
> Apple and Google hand you customers on a silver platter for the bargain, consistent price of 30%.
30% is not a bargain, particularly when you're a small developer. And just because your app is approved doesn't mean that they're handing you customers on a silver platter either. There have been complaints for years over Apple's App Store search functionality, which they also have complete control over. It's wild to see someone cast so many passionate developers as naive and ignorant to the reality that 30% doesn't leave much room for any kind of profit. And all Apple did was give you as a developer permission to run your code on their devices. They're not guaranteeing you customers. They're just playing gatekeeper and adding little value beyond access to the market.
There are millions of app developers and you are saying that most of them are doing customer acquisition external to the App Store ?
Because I just did various searches for note taking and productivity apps on my phone and no one is buying ads. From my experience only the larger app developers invest in their own customer acquisition whilst the rest all rely on app discovery.
> There are millions of app developers and you are saying that most of them are doing customer acquisition external to the App Store ?
They can't do customer aquisition external to the App store because Apple prevents them from doing so.
Thats the very problem. Apple won't allow other app stores to compete, and you can't just download an app from someone's website, and install it.
Apple prevents you from doing so. They don't even offer some hidden setting which says "Allow 3rd party apps, warning, warning, warning, this could make your device less secure".
If the app stores are such a great deal then why do the alternatives have to be prohibited or purposely made into a disastrous user experience in order to get developers to use the app stores?
Hey, if I could use anything else apart from the App Store, I'd do it in a jiffy. But as it currently stands, you cannot distribute your app at all unless you have a developer license and you either publish it on the app store or buy a separate business deployment certificate (which only works on in-house devices and let's you MITM the devices basically)
> It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market.
> If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax.
How can you distribute an app for iPhone on your own website?
The majority of the cost is simply for being able to participate in their market of 1B+ credit cards which lets ISV's frictionlessly sell Apps direct to consumers globally, it's not for the direct tangible benefits the App Store otherwise they wouldn't outlaw competing services that would handle the same services for a reduced royalty %.
Although what's not being discussed are negative consequences of allowing multiple App stores vs Apple's single unified curated UX. The UX for searching, purchasing, managing payments/subscriptions would be more fragmented & confusing. Being able to bypass curation by installing Apps from another App store which could install malware, scams, privacy violating & other undesirable Apps would hurt Apple's brand as a simple, secure & safe platform parents are confident in using themselves & giving to their kids (which for example allows us to manage/disable IAP's).
At 2M+ Apps your App isn't going to magically appear in front of all consumer devices, you still have to do the majority of the marketing yourself, unless you're lucky enough to be listed in editor picks or some curated list, but you're not paying for exposure or discoverability as the % royalty is the same regardless.
With that said 30% seems fair & standard across most platforms [1]. I don't really understand why 30% is unfair for iOS which has created the most lucrative & accessible market for ISV's. It's simply a cost of participating in a market. Just like you don't get free shelf life in shops (virtual or physical) if you make a product, free access to Game consoles if you make a game, free top search placement if you make a website, etc.
To even get approved we had to make sure the App doesn't offer any sign-up or even billing info at all. And still went round and round for approval explaining how paid services, if any, are completely outside Apple realm.