As we reported last month, Apple is lowering the commission on the App Store from 30 to 15 percent for developers with revenues below one million dollars – and that will be the majority.
Apple currently has over 20 million registered developers and the App Store has around 1.8 million apps from around 500,000 developers.
As Apple now introduces a lower commission of 15 percent for developers whose business draws in less than a million dollars a year, the overwhelming majority of developers will benefit from the reduction, reports 9to5Mac.
Figures from Appfigures show that 376,000 of the apps in the store charge in some way (sold directly or have buy-in-the-app/subscriptions) and they come from around 124,500 developers. Two percent of these have revenues in excess of one million dollars and will continue to pay 30 percent to Apple.
Of those who pull in over a million dollars, just over 50 percent are game developers, while each about five percent develop apps in health and exercise, social media, entertainment and photo/video. Education, lifestyle, music, productivity and tools have even fewer developers with large revenues. However, these figures apply to 2019 and Appfigures points out that the 2020 pandemic has changed the balance.
For Apple, the reduced commission will not affect revenue much. According to data from Sensor Tower from 2019, one percent of the developers accounted for 93 percent of the revenue, and I guess the 98th percentile unit accounts for a large part of the remaining seven percent.
The original story: Apple halves App Store fees for small businesses.
There have been many complaints that the App Store is unfair to develelopers who had been expected to pay 30% to Apple.
This article originally appeared on Macworld Sweden. Translation by Karen Haslam.