People seem to think that the customer exists because of the iPhone app store, when it's often usually the other way around. Other than a small handful of apps being promoted for free in the app store, the majority of businesses have to spend very real, very expensive advertising dollars or offer a unique product to attract customers. If you have your own product your customers want but they just happen to have an iPhone, you're now forced to pay the maker of their device 30% off the top of your gross revenues like some kind of Mafia. This same Mafia does everything they can to make sure that web/Safari experience is as poor of an experience as possible so that users prefer native apps delivered through the app store.Imagine if you sold expensive CAD software through your own sales team and advertising efforts completely offline but because some of those users were on Windows they have to get it through the Windows store and 30% of your topline revenue went to Microsoft?
Because of the way online marketing/advertising works with competitive bidding in a lot of cases I would bet that Apple is making more margin than the developers of the apps are. Your competitor who doesn't have to pay a 30% Mafia shakedown fee for their product will be able to outcompete you on clicks every time.
jrowen|2 years ago
Can you expand on this? I prefer to use the web when I can, and every time I've begrudgingly downloaded an app, it's the service itself that was actively pushing me away from their poor/hamstrung web client. I'm still left with the impression that users are staying there and developers jump through the hoops because it's just that good. That doesn't mean it's right, but - that's Capitalism, baby!
Also, the MS of yore would have absolutely done that if they thought they could get away with it, and definitely engaged in more than their fair share of unsavory tactics.