"Just to process payments" is wrong. It's for access to the marketplace, which Apple created and sustains. Arbitrary? Yes. But it's not some "payment processor" to an existing market that's independent of Apple (like e.g. web payment processors are).
"5x the market rate" is also dishonest. What's the "market rate"? Doesn't Google ask for a 30% cut for the Play store? What about console makers? Doesn't Amazon ask for 70% Cut from publishers?
Does anybody else has a say on what Basecamp charges, what partnerships they go into, how to add plugins to its products, and what to charge for them?
I don't think that the Apple store (or Google Play for that matters) can be called "marketplace".
They are more like "the only authorized place to sell your goods", they are more like a pharmacy/chemist, i.e. a place licensed by the State/Law to sell specific products that cannot be sold in other shops.
Let's compare it (Apples) with oranges ;-).
You produce oranges, you plant the trees, water them, when they are ripe you pick the oranges and carry them to the city with a truck.
Than you can choose to sell them (after paying a nominal license fee/getting an authorization) directly from the back of the truck on the side of the road or rent a dedicated space in the city central market.
Now, selling them in the central market gives you some advantages, as people are more likely to go to the central market than to pass near your parked truck, but, on the other hand, the cost of the stall is very, very high, like 30% of your sales.
So, to get even you have to sell an orange for 50 cents (or whatever), but you want 20% margin, you can choose between selling them at 60 cents each by the roadside or sell them at 85 cents each in the market.
The city then decides that (in order to protect the citizens) your oranges needs to be tested and can only be sold at your (rented) stall in the central market and that you have to pay a 30% tax on sales for the rent.
Oranges end up costing 85 cents each, of which 25 cents or more go to the city, and the citizens are safer.
>They are more like "the only authorized place to sell your goods", they are more like a pharmacy/chemist, i.e. a place licensed by the State/Law to sell specific products that cannot be sold in other shops.
They are not "the only authorized place to sell your goods".
They're only "the only authorized place to sell your goods _inside_ an iOS device".
Which is different - if we really want to compare apples to apples.
"Just to process payments" is wrong. It's for access to the marketplace, which Apple created and sustains. Arbitrary? Yes. But it's not some "payment processor" to an existing market that's independent of Apple (like e.g. web payment processors are).
"5x the market rate" is also dishonest. What's the "market rate"? Doesn't Google ask for a 30% cut for the Play store? What about console makers? Doesn't Amazon ask for 70% Cut from publishers?
Does anybody else has a say on what Basecamp charges, what partnerships they go into, how to add plugins to its products, and what to charge for them?