Apple reduced the App Store rake, developers can make more money

"You set up a stall on my site, and I collect rent from you." The App Store commission strategy is no longer a secret for Apple.

Simply put, if your product is sold for 100 yuan in the App Store, the part you can get is 70 yuan, and Apple will take 30 yuan as a commission. This 30% commission ratio is now very public. data.

However, starting next year, developers may make more money.

Apple has officially announced the "App Store Small Business Program" (App Store Small Business Program) new measures aimed at reducing the proportion of commissions for some iOS application developers.

The basic content of this measure is that starting from January 1, 2021, if developers’ income during the year is less than 1 million U.S. dollars, their commission rate will be reduced from 30% to 15%. Big discount.

Although the details of this plan will not be announced until early December, the basic participation criteria are very simple and straightforward:

• Existing developers, as well as all apps of developers who have launched products on the App Store for the first time, have a total revenue of less than US$1 million in 2020, and they can participate in this plan and enjoy reduced commission rates.
• If the income of participating developers exceeds the $1 million limit, the remaining time of the year will be charged at the standard commission rate.
• If the developer's business income does not reach $1 million in the next calendar year, they can re-qualify for 15% commission in the following year.

In other words, as long as the income of the developer in the App Store after deduction of the share is less than US$1 million in 2020, which is about to end, you can immediately enjoy a 15% preferential commission rate starting on January 1 next year. .

But if in the next year or later, the income during the year exceeds $1 million at a certain moment, then the income for the remaining time will be calculated based on the original commission ratio of 30%.

If the developer’s revenue falls from more than US$1 million to less than US$1 million, they can again enjoy the 15% preferential commission in the following year.

In short, 1 million US dollars is a guarantee limit, as long as you do not exceed this limit, you can always enjoy the commission halving discount.

The reduction in commission rates has given Apple developers a little bit of annoyance, and this is also because "the world has been bitter for a long time."

Is the 30% rake reasonable? In fact, this is hard to say. As a software developer, I definitely hope that this ratio is as low as possible. However, from Apple's standpoint, is the 30% commission as the world's number one application platform excessive? It does not seem to be excessive.

For a long time, both medium and large developers and individual developers have followed Apple’s set of rules, but after a long time, there will always be people who jump out and try to touch Apple. I believe you all know that in the middle of this year , Epic, the developer of the popular game "Fortnite", was unwilling to accept the percentage and tried to bypass the Apple Store to pay and went to court with Apple (by the way, Google was also sued because the Play Store also had the same percentage).

There was a lot of turmoil on the Internet. Some people on the Epic side felt that Apple was the "evil dragon" and Epic was a warrior who challenged the evil dragon. Others were on the Apple side and felt that Epic didn't want to pay the "rent" because of the popularity of the game. It even blocked Epic’s developer account on August 28.

In the end, the court ruled that both parties stepped back. Epic's "Fortress Night" could not be listed on Apple's App Store, and Apple had no right to block Epic's developer account. This matter temporarily came to an end.

Although Epic failed to win in the end, it did create a public opinion field. The commission was originally an internal matter among practitioners. It suddenly affected a large number of ordinary game users, which attracted attention out of the circle. Perhaps since that time, Apple has been thinking about how to reformulate the rake policy.

In fact, from the perspective of this new policy, Apple is still very smart. Instead of adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to reduce the commission ratio, it has attracted a large number of small and medium-sized developers who have an absolute advantage in quantity. For the "basic disk" of the business, it was divided into two classes at once. The "rich" paid more and the "poor" paid less. The gradient design is more flexible, and it also ensures that Apple's income in this area will not drop too much. many.

This step by Apple can be regarded as a kind of destruction of the "hidden rules" of the industry. In fact, it is not just Apple. Google's Play Store commission ratio is also 30%, including Sony PlayStation, Amazon AppStore, Samsung Galaxy Store, Microsoft Store, Nintendo eShop, etc. And so on, have adopted the same commission structure as Apple. Although it is not fair to fire at Apple, who makes Apple the big brother?

However, at least as a direct competition platform, Google should be more uncomfortable. Whether this will become a new start for the industry to adjust the commission ratio is still a bit to be seen.

Compared with apps, the domestic game channels have higher commissions

Look back at the domestic situation.

When Apple has reached the commission ratio of 15:85, most of the domestic Android channels still remain at the 5:5 ratio. Is the domestic Android channel "grinding teeth and sucking blood, killing people like numb"?

But in fact, the situation at home and abroad is different. On application platforms such as the Apple App Store and Google Play Store abroad, the commission is purely a commission. Apple and Google will not do any additional promotion. It's just "rent collection".

In the domestic Android distribution channels, although the percentage of 50-50 is very high, the domestic channels have various ratings, and the channels themselves also have KPIs. For those who are not very competitive, they do not have the ability to issue. As far as capable games are concerned, domestic Android channels will be actively promoted in the early stages of the shelves, so as to obtain a relatively large amount of exposure. For developers, it saves part of the promotion cost.

But for top developers, like Tencent, they have their own traffic, so there is no shortage of attention. The ratio of five to five is like cutting meat directly on the heart.

According to the game media GameLook report , in 2019, Tencent officially launched several boutique games such as "Jian Wang 3: Fingertip Jianghu" into the channel, requiring a 3:7 ratio sharing strategy. At that time, Huawei and Xiaomi stores quickly compromised, while OPPO and vivo stores were not on the shelves.

However, I searched again and found that OPPO and vivo's app stores can find these games, and it should have accepted Tencent's request for sharing.

But one thing I have to mention is that in different distribution channels, games actually have different servers. Games on these distribution channels are what we commonly call "channel servers." Not only are the price settings for in-app purchases and other non-channel servers different, The data will not be synchronized with non-channel servers. There are also various problems such as inducing downloads. We also mentioned in the article "iPhone and Android game data is not interoperable, why the same Android does not work" article .

In addition, because of the large differences between the domestic mobile game ecology and the application ecology, the above 5:5 division is mainly concentrated on game distribution. The percentage of the application is based on the post of the V2EX community user imac1988 in 2018:

Tencent, Huawei, Xiaomi, Alibaba (pea pods, etc.) are all 30% of the rake; Baidu stipulates that 30% of app revenue is less than 500,000, and 50% for more than 500,000. 360 is if the first three months If the income is less than 500,000, then there will be no rake in the first three months. After that, it is not clear how much, according to the market it should be 30%. In addition, application markets such as oppo and vivo cannot find relevant information at all.

Basically speaking, it is better to be in line with international standards. It is also because domestic mobile phones have risen and are sold all over the world. Many applications may be available in the whole region. It is a safer way to maintain a more consistent commission strategy with the world.

In fact, in the past year or so, platforms have been under greater pressure than ever before. Not only have the voices criticized Apple’s App Store and other platforms growing louder, but in September last year, those developers who were dissatisfied with Apple’s revenue system also established "Coalition For App Fairness" (Coalition For App Fairness).

In China, the distribution of game channels has gradually shifted from the original hardware channels and tripartite channels to vertical channels such as Bilibili and TapTap.

Generally speaking, for small and medium developers, the future is more and more favorable, and they are more motivated to develop more useful applications and boutique independent games. This will keep developers alive, while also allowing us ordinary users to have more choices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said to the strategy in a statement: Small businesses are the backbone of our global economy.

Hope Apple can do this well.

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Ai Faner | Original link · View comments · Sina Weibo