> The $99/year is predominantly for access to the App Store. It's up to Apple what constitutes a license fee for developers to have commercial use of Apple's proprietary software libraries.
Interestingly, the $99/year fee is to access the app store, but there's a a $299/year fee to bypass the appstore.
It is hypothesised that the main reason Apple persists with the $99/year fee is as a glorified CAPTCHA, to stop developers from mechanically creating account after account in order to upload scummy app after scummy app. If that's the reason, I wouldn't entirely blame them.
The $299 enterprise program probably costs Apple substantially more than $299 per customer/enterprise in order to run. While I have no idea about the numbers, I wouldn't be surprised that it is a substantial loss-maker for Apple, justified only because it's necessary to keep the iPhone/iPad relevant in some enterprises.
Interestingly, the $99/year fee is to access the app store, but there's a a $299/year fee to bypass the appstore.
https://developer.apple.com/support/enrollment/ notes: The Apple Developer Program annual fee is 99 USD and the Apple Developer Enterprise Program annual fee is 299 USD