Apple hires economists to help prove its App Store commissions aren't anti-competitive
expensively! — buying PalmOS apps for my Treo from websites like Palm InfoCenter (and I believe CrackBerry had their own web-based app store?) prior the iOS App Store. It was just $30+ an app and the experience was terrible. Not sure what the cut was. Chris Maddern / @chrismaddern : This study is interesting, but irrelevant. The problem isn't the 30%. The problem is that the App Store is the only way to distribute software to over 1 billion devices. https://twitter.com/... Brent Simmons / @brentsimmons : Again with the 30% Apple cut. It's not the only issue with the App Store. But I can't help thinking about how some of my friends would still have a job at Omni had that cut been actually reasonable. It's not the only issue, but it's not nothing, either. @jason : Apple's 30% is fair, but they should allow consumers to install 3rd party App Stores (perhaps with a setting & disclaimer that you will no longer get Apple support if use them) https://www.techmeme.com/... Quinn Nelson / @snazzyq : ‘Apple releases propaganda’ would be a more apt headline. https://twitter.com/... Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : More researchers use stores with 30% fees! https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... @rsebbe : Yeah, let's all focus on the 30% Apple cut non-problem. (during that time, all the fundamental App Store issues - business model crippling, unfair competition, search & featuring - can all be silently discarded) https://twitter.com/... Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : Looking forward to reading their op-eds https://twitter.com/... Alex Heath / @alexeheath : case closed I guess https://twitter.com/... Steve LeVine / @stevelevine : Apple defends its 30% rake-off-the-top of all app sales by arguing that everyone does it. Everyone does not do it — unless you are Facebook, Google, Uber and the other monopoly platforms. By comparison, the car industry earns an average 6% profit margin. https://www.analysisgroup.com/ ... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : This is a good example of corporate misdirection. The problem with Apple's 30% cut isn't that it's 30% but instead they go out of their way to force apps to give them that cut via policies that prevent you from using alternative payments or linking to site https://www.cnet.com/... Lauren Feiner / @lauren_feiner : Here's a likely peek into Apple's testimony next week before the House antitrust panel: it commissioned a study that found its App Store fees are in line with other digital marketplaces. by @kifleswing https://www.cnbc.com/... Casey Newton / @caseynewton : They just paid some economists to Google the fees that other platforms charge and published it as a PDF. That's it https://twitter.com/... Steve Kovach / @stevekovach : Apple-commissioned study says the App Store is actually good. Apple released the study ahead of Tim Cook's congressional testimony next week. https://www.cnbc.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : New: Facing antitrust pressure, Apple has just released a third-party “study” on the fees charged by other online marketplaces. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Apple-funded research finds the App Store's 30% cut is right in line with prevailing rates. https://www.analysisgroup.com/ ... Thanks: @aidaakl
Context & Ripple Effects
By mid-2020 the App Store's 30% cut had moved from developer gripe to policy target: OneZero's investigation of anti-competitive restrictions earlier that year put the store under explicit regulatory scrutiny, and a June analysis argued its reach rests on being the only distribution channel rather than superior service. Days after hiring these economists, Tim Cook would carry the same argument to Congress, telling lawmakers the store has "opened the gate wider" and that Apple lacks dominant share in testimony before US House members.
The economist hire is the opening move in what becomes Apple's standing playbook: years later an Apple-funded study touting $1.3T in developer billings recycles the same structure — commissioned research defending the commission — while court documents revealed Apple internally weighed cutting the 30% fee as early as 2011.
First-order effects
- Apple enters the July 2020 House antitrust hearing armed with formal economic arguments rather than only executive testimony, giving Cook and the company a defensible empirical line against the monopoly framing.
- Developers and critics immediately contest the framing: the dispute shifts from whether 30% is high to whether any rate is legitimate when the App Store is the sole path to over a billion devices.
Second-order effects
- Critics like Chris Maddern and Brent Simmons redirect the argument from price to exclusivity, forcing Apple to defend gatekeeping power, not just its margin — a harder case to make with market studies alone.
- Commissioned-economics becomes a recurring weapon: once the first Apple-funded study lands, every subsequent fee defense gets benchmarked by opponents against the funder, raising skepticism costs for the whole genre of platform self-research.
Third-order effects
- Platform take rates harden into a regulatory battleground where legitimacy is argued through competing economic studies, pushing regulators toward judging distribution exclusivity rather than headline percentages.
- If the exclusivity critique prevails — as Epic's later charge of malicious compliance under the EU's DMA suggests — the structural endpoint is mandated alternative distribution channels, converting the App Store from a mandatory toll road into one storefront among several.
The trend: Gatekeeper platforms are responding to antitrust pressure by institutionalizing commissioned economic research that reframes take-rate disputes as questions of value delivered rather than market power.