When Microsoft helped me get Krita in the Windows Store I hadn't much expectations. Now the Windows Store and Steam (fifty/fifty) bring in enough to pay me and six other people to work on Krita almost full-time. It has saved me from having to find a day job that would have driven me round the bend for sure.<p>That said, it sucks that I cannot tell people they can also download Krita from krita.org. There's always the fear that some day, the Windows Store will be closed, or Krita will be kicked out or whatever.<p>Publishing in an app store means you're a sharecropper, with all that entails.
For a full view of not just what an executive says, but Microsoft's actions here:<p>The Windows app store gives a 95/5 cut to developers, as long as the download happened from an external link to the page. If the discovery happened via an app store search or marketing within the app store, that cut changes to 85/15 [1]<p>I would also like to find some revenue split data for the Xbox store, though I imagine that's far more nuanced, with many different contracts for different third parties. If I'm an indie developer with no negotiating power, is that a 70/30?<p>[1] <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/06/microsoft-store-revenue-share/" rel="nofollow">https://9to5mac.com/2019/03/06/microsoft-store-revenue-share...</a>
Oh, how the tables have turned! I still remember Microsoft's chokehold on the entire industry in the 1990s, their "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy, and nearly total monopoly.<p>Now the wolf is an advocate for the sheep :-)
Pot, kettle: The Azure Marketplace for b2b apps is also 20-30%. Worse, while most app stores pay out 30-60 days after use, Azure can hold on to your payments about 3-6mo. I am a fan of the concept, but this kind of stuff is entirely flexing and broken PM politics. Imagine if Intel did that to juice proceeds of all x86 users for a couple of years!
Apple's demand for 30% of all in-app purchases, with no other way to get an app onto their platform, and its increasing censorship efforts to block an app from informing a user of alternative payment methods, isn't going to last, because antitrust regulators are going to kill it.
The credit card companies found that 1-3% is all they get away with skimming from the top. That being said they have massive volumes. I wonder why everyone is so accepting of such a massive cut of the profits. We need to demand 2% and NO MORE of a cut of profits and that should go to everything from Ubers to software sales.<p>I think a really low percentage wave is going to disrupt these markets as new competitors that are bootstrapped, slimmed down and not VC money hungry enter the scene. All it takes is for people to start demanding they get paid for the real work and not the sale.
This is why Google’s strategy with PWA (Progressive Web App) intrigues me, although android is not a walled garden (sideload, 3rd party appstores) pushing for PWAs seems counter intuitive to increase its Playstore revenue; same reason why Apple has been hesitant about supporting PWA.<p>So what's the deal? It's hard to beleive Google cares more about open web platform than their Playstore revenue or it's just they want to ditch android/ART completely in future.<p>P.S. As a consumer I'm glad PWA exists and can't wait to see the end of duopoly in the smartphone ecosystem.
Is Microsoft doing that because their store never took off? Probably yes.<p>Should governments take a closer look into app stores? Absolutely yes, those games are rigged, monopolistic, and broken.
Are there many applications these days which are not available as a "web app" aka website?<p>If we (developers) go for a "website first" approach, there is not much the device manufacturers can do against people using our products.<p>From a business perspective, is there a strong incentive to develop apps at all, when you already have a website?<p>Any stories of startups that had a running website already and then boosted their usage by an order of magnitude by adding apps for the various appstores?
I find the feeling of rooting for Microsoft very strange indeed but the Apple Appstore is really a thing that needs to be broken down/opened up ASAP. Microsoft gets slapped over IE and Media Player but Apple can go way further and lock out every browser but their own (all iOS browsers are just a skin on Safari). Apple has become what Microsoft used to be - IMHO worse.
It's interesting that app stores rose in the 2000s when we were at the tail end of selling software in boxes. Margins on packaged software were often 5-15% at the distributor level and 10-25% at the retail level for consumer software. For enterprise software, it was customary to make 40% on the first license and 10-20% on upgrades. So, the app stores aren't too far off of what the reseller share would have been...
Oh Brad Smith. Like, only few years back he was heading Microsoft’s onslaught against Linux and open source with exactly the opposite, calling Microsoft technology “open” because they published APIs. I wonder where Republican law makers got their straight face hypocrisy and cynicism if not from companies like Microsoft.
It is so strange that corporations fights for what essentially is iPhone owners freedoms.<p>The right to repair - fix app store owner decisions.<p>And that's not the worst. Apple sells devices with limited support. Perfectly functioning devices with no way to change OS once it become unsupported. Devices with expiration date.
Why not broaden the spectrum and regulate market places overall?<p>Amazon, AppStore, PlayStore, etc.<p>The pattern is the same:<p>- Bend/ignore/disregard rules for their own products;<p>- Leverage data from competition for their advantage within the market place;<p>- Ban/exclude/penalize products from one day to the other;<p>- Boost/give privilege their own apps;<p>- Limited support/response, most of the times automated, disregarding the investment and commitment people took on their market place;
App stores on the desktop are nowhere as close to their mobile counterparts. Web versions of mobile apps exist, but people always choose to go with the native versions. While on desktops, the opposite is true. I've always wondered why that is the case.
Apple could allow alternative app store which then can be permanently banned if any of the app distributed via it contains malware/adware or privacy issues
I agree Apple is abusive here.<p>There is also a very valid counterargument. Apple maintain the quality of apps on their app story by being a censor.<p>There are a lot of ways to scam people or bug their devices, and by and large Apple also create a sufficiently safe environment for iOS users.<p>There do seem to be two aspects in conflict, but good for DHH for kicking this off. 30% is obcene.
Walmart called on regulators to do the dirty work of controlling how Target negotiates the sale of shelf space within its walls.<p>“As one of the largest retailers in the world, making billions each year in profit, it’s unconscionable if we sat by not calling out others for doing the same.”<p>Walmart continued, “It’s imperative that we sully our competitions brand to make gains in the financial markets. Without state backed protectionism for large enterprises, us Barons are really just being hung out to dry.”<p>Walmart has continued to profit mightily, but it says the complaint is predicated on the fact they could be profiting MORE if someone forced Target to behave more like the rest of the majority.<p>When asked if Walmart had considered rebuilding its own image to gain business, there was a pause, before the conversation returned to targeting Target.<p>Walmart blew of criticism it’s used the market to wipe out competition in the past. When asked why they simply don’t do that to Target they replied, “Target is too big financially. So we need a bigger bully they can’t damage in return to stand up for us gritty, ruggedly individual elites. It’s the story of humanity to build government that’s coddles and pampers a privileged minority. It should be no different now.”<p>When it was suggested the public should advocate for dissolution of middlemen landlords in general, rather than drag the public courts through a pissing contest between blowhards, and stop wasting its precious time resource arbitrating the concerns of petty rich guys, the room laughed.
This is a great example about why despite the self-interested crying and whining, the App Store policy is a good thing.<p>Why does Microsoft care about this? They have the market power to negotiate better terms. The answer is simple -- they want to reassert control over email. The Outlook app no longer uses ActiveSync, and Microsoft architects usually imply or state outright that ActiveSync is a legacy product.<p>The MS client stack has a weaker technology advantage than it ever had. AD was the great anchor of enterprises, and it is eroding slowly as things shift to cloud. (Remember, enteprises are a decade behind startups) The whole point of moving away from open email protocols is that things like access control that enterprises need must use Azure AD. That drives deeper entrenchment in MS SKUs and drives products like ATP, Dynamics, the MS Voice stack, etc. Better PR/branding aside, Microsoft is more like 1995 Microsoft than ever.<p>You can see over the years, Microsoft has bolted all sorts of mobile user experiences over traditional Exchange/SharePoint/etc. Teams was the first one that has had staying power. They can't add functionality to the mail/messaging/video/collaboration stack unless they break legacy.<p>It would be really awful if Apple caved, and 80% of the commercial email market became a walled garden of a historically hostile platform owner, all so that Basecamp can make a few bucks selling an email client.