30% is not as much as people think it is. I've been involved in billing systems that do recurring billing and it is actually surprisingly hard, a lot harder than one-off payments. Just a few examples:
* Credit cards on file get stolen or expire all the time.
* People forget to cancel in time and do charge backs which you then have to resolve in some other way.
* People e-mail customer support a lot more than for regular payments ("I want cancel, and please refund last x month too"). Support is expensive
* Apple operates in a lot of countries where credit card penetration is very low and other payment methods are required.
... and then they handle the entire operation of the app store, and they need to make a profit somewhere. When the iPhone just came out Apple claimed they were not making any money on the app store and I think that's entirely believable. Margins will have gone up as scale increased but now that they have added recurring billing those margins will be lower again.
Double faux pas: It's not subjective, because I provide quantitative arguments (Apple not making money on the app store initially) and facts (recurring billing is much more expensive than regular billing, which is common knowledge to billing experts). Also note that I did NOT say 30% wasn't too much, I said it's not as much as people think.
* Credit cards on file get stolen or expire all the time.
* People forget to cancel in time and do charge backs which you then have to resolve in some other way.
* People e-mail customer support a lot more than for regular payments ("I want cancel, and please refund last x month too"). Support is expensive
* Apple operates in a lot of countries where credit card penetration is very low and other payment methods are required.
... and then they handle the entire operation of the app store, and they need to make a profit somewhere. When the iPhone just came out Apple claimed they were not making any money on the app store and I think that's entirely believable. Margins will have gone up as scale increased but now that they have added recurring billing those margins will be lower again.