Don't want to play devil's advocate here but if they didn't, many big players would be using their platforms to build their apps, reaching Apple's customers on Apple devices, giving the app for free and processing everything off-Apple land, basically using the whole platform for making millions without giving Apple literally anything ($99 dev fee is nothing compared to all the money being made).
If I were a company who literally created a whole industry and many other companies were making millions off the platform I created, I'd of course take my cut, and a well-deserved big one.
It's a for-profit company who enabled those apps/purchases* to be made in the first place, not a charity or a non-profit.
(*: not talking about non-app related payments like real world items, obviously)
Following your logic than all PC makers should be paying a fee to IBM for creating the PC? It doesn't make sense, it was never done this way in the past and it only goes on because sadly most politicians are borderline computer illiterate and are easily bamboozled by the complexity of the matter. Just look at when Sundar Pichai testified at the US Senate, most lawmakers have zero ideas on how the Internet works, and they don't really have the means to understand the similarities that exist between what Apple is doing and the "brick and mortar" world they are accustomed to.
If you create an industry, a platform, you already have instruments to monetize on it. the Apple software platform is already tied to its own devices, from whose sales Apple has earned a vast amount of wealth over the years and profited thanks to their massive margins. What makes Apple different from Google in this regard is that the Play store has won due to consumer choice, while Apple has basically prohibited side loading and alternate stores in any possible way and shape.
The Amazon Appstore has failed to gain marketshare because people simply didn't like it, and Google play was just superior, end of it, and if you want to use Google services in order to give your customers what they want you have to pay Google's fee, fair and square. On an Apple device there are no ways to sell people anything without paying Apple because Apple does not allow it.
If Apple starts providing a shitty service with its Appstore, there is no way to circumvent it, you must choose either to quit the iOS market entirely or play along whatever rules they decide to adopt. This is basically extorting protection money, with a few extra steps on top of it.
> Following your logic than all PC makers should be paying a fee to IBM for creating the PC.
This is called patents, so yes, actually. But this is more akin to Microsoft charging 30% for sales in Windows and Xbox, which would be totally allowed.
> politicians are borderline computer illiterate
And developers are ignorant of business and law which is what this case is really about. Absolutely nothing about Apple's sales commission is about tech. Wanting something to be different just because it's digital doesn't make it so. Uber is still a taxi company.
> you already have instruments to monetize on it
And that instrument is charging for access to the platform -- some might say 30%.
> there are no ways to sell people anything without paying Apple
Right. This is the point. This is literally the thing Apple charges for. The one thing. The thing that people, very rationally, want for free. I also want to get all the benefits of a company's work without paying too.
> you must choose either to quit the iOS market entirely
This is the core issue, Apple, and the law in most countries, say you have absolutely no inherent right to access the market they created. You don't get to demand the ability to set up a stall in someone's mall because they charge 30% to the stores.
Not even mobile computing. There was a Windows Mobile long before the iPhone existed. They may have really brought it mainstream, but if they hadn't, someone else would have.
So poor Apple would only be left with the 1000$ for each iPhone sold?
I wonder if such arguments existed decrying Microsoft's immense charity in allowing others to make money off of its platform back when Windows was the dominant way of computing and connecting to the Internet with 0 fees for installing software on Windows...
It reminds me of ISPs' arguments that Netflix and like should pay more for fast connection to their customers because "otherwise who is gonna pay for the bandwidth?" We the customers do. We pay a high monthly fee for our connection and ISPs want to slow down our traffic to double-dip by charging content providers the access to us. If I pay 1500$ for a phone, I expect Apple to treat me as their customer, not as a resource to be sold to App developers.
If I were a company who literally created a whole industry and many other companies were making millions off the platform I created, I'd of course take my cut, and a well-deserved big one.
It's a for-profit company who enabled those apps/purchases* to be made in the first place, not a charity or a non-profit.
(*: not talking about non-app related payments like real world items, obviously)