If you sell an app, subscription or other product through the App Store, Apple gets 30% of the money.<\/p>\n
That’s how its been since the App Store’s inception seven years ago.<\/p>\n
But soon Apple will for the first time lower its App Store commission on one condition: if an app can retain a subscriber for over a year, the revenue split will be 85\/15.<\/p>\n
The change will apply immediately to existing apps with users that are more than a year old – potentially providing an injection of extra revenue for many companies.<\/p>\n
Spotify, for example, boasted of having 20 million subscribers this time last year.<\/p>\n
For the sake of argument, if even just half of those subscribers are still paying members today, the change could potentially represent around $15m (\u00a310.3m) in extra subscription revenue for Spotify every month, and that’s probably a conservative estimate.<\/p>\n
‘Terrific news’<\/strong> Soon, any app will be able to offer such an option. “This could be the change that makes the market for professional-calibre iPad apps possible,” wrote John Gruber, a technology writer and long-time Apple watcher. The danger, of course, is by opening up subscriptions to every type of app, Apple risks creating a frustrating environment that’s irritating for users who were accustomed to the simple model of paid or free apps.<\/p>\n Then again, subscriptions are surely more likely to encourage quality compared to one-off payments – the challenge for developers shifts from being convincing people to pay once, to convincing them to keep paying, again and again.<\/p>\n Mr Gruber noted, however, that there was still some uncertainty about whether all apps could use the new business model.<\/p>\n The revenue split change is just one piece of Apple’s plans for its store, which now has 1.5 million apps on offer – second only to Google’s Play store.<\/p>\n It means discovery for apps seeking to gain new users can be difficult, with limited possibilities for promotion within the store other than becoming an Apple “featured app”, a lucrative accolade that can make or break a new app.<\/p>\n Soon, ads will appear at the top of searches made in the App Store. They will, Apple says, be relevant to the search in question, and be clearly marked as being a paid-for position. Ads won’t be shown to users who are under 13.<\/p>\n Location data is used to power some of the ads, but users can opt out of this, Apple said, and no user data is shared with the advertisers in question.<\/p>\n Developer’s conference<\/strong> More announcements are on the way, but it’s traditional for WWDC to be more about software improvements than new hardware.<\/p>\n Microsoft, Facebook and Google have already held their equivalent events, and at each, artificial intelligence was the main talking point. Will Apple offer the same?<\/p>\n There’s rumblings in the Valley that Apple lags way behind the others when it comes to machine learning and AI technologies – presenting a problem which one prominent observer warned could see Apple become the “next Blackberry.”<\/p>\n Such talk is premature, of course, when talking about the world’s most valuable company. The changes to the App Store – outlined in Apple’s words here – are about maintaining dominance of the market, not chasing it.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you sell an app, subscription or other product through the App Store, Apple gets 30% of the money. That’s how its been since the App Store’s inception seven years ago. But soon Apple will for the first time lower its App Store commission on one condition: if an app can retain a subscriber for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":220935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[106],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nAs well as price, Apple will introduce another significant change to App Store subscriptions. Until now, only apps in certain categories – media and entertainment content – could charge subscription fees.<\/p>\n
\nThis is widely seen as a way for Apple to encourage high-end productivity apps onto its mobile operating system, iOS.<\/p>\n
\n“I think this is terrific news both for developers and users.”<\/p>\n
\nThe changes have been announced ahead of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers’ Conference, or WWDC.<\/p>\n