[WA]

Yeah I heard this before, but no, it is mostly a processing fee. The reality is:

- Developers helped to make Apple the platform it is today.

- Apple had their 30% fee when the App Store was MUCH smaller. It's not like that fee came only after they had the audience.

- Apple will do zero marketing for you unless you are already successful.

- Apple doesn't earn money with the most popular free apps, but still hosts them. They could charge by traffic, by downloads, whatever, but they won't.

- Apple will charge you if you make money in the app. They will force you to use their payment processor if you want to make money.

So, it is 100% a processing fee and everything else either came later or isn't congruent with what they actually charge money for.

[Izkata]

Just as an aside, everything here is true of Android as well, and I think the cut was higher (or there were more intermediaries taking a bit as well): I priced an app $1.47 in 2010 so I'd get about $1 on every purchase.

[WA]

True, the Google cut was also 30%, but they didn't make such a fuss about "no links to website" and stuff like that. They didn't even have a review process for a long time.