Apple To Offer iOS Developers 85-15 Revenue Split; Debut Paid App Store Search Ads (theverge.com)

Apple says it will now take a smaller cut of commission from app developers provided they have customers who stick with their subscription model for longer than a year. Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, told The Verge in an interview that the company will revise the 70-30 split for such developers to 85-15. In addition, the company will also begin showing search ads for apps in its iOS App Store search results. Also, the company says it is speeding up app review times "to the point where 50 percent of submitted apps are now reviewed in 24 hours, and 90 percent are reviewed within 48 hours." From the report: If the new subscription model becomes widely adopted, it will represent a fundamental shift in the economics of the App Store. Developers will be incentivized to sell their apps for a recurring fee instead of a one-time cost. It could change the way consumers pay for certain apps, but it also presents a massive opportunity for developers, many of whom feel the app economy has been become moribund in recent years. And as iPhone sales growth slows, a move to app subscriptions is another way for Apple wring more profits from its existing user base.Apple columnist John Gruber has more details.

Comments

App review speedup is real, and it's spectacular

[SuperKendall]

You might look skeptically upon Apple's claim that review times have sped up. How could they possibly have sped up to the process to a day from a week?

Yet, it is the case. Every single person I know submitting iOS apps has had every app approved within a day, sometimes just a few hours.

And it's not like they are just not looking at anything, in one case I head about someone who submitted an app update, the reviewer found a crashing bug, the developer fixed and resubmitted and it was approved - all within the same day!

That alone was a HUGE boon to app development as it made a lot of customers very cranky a change could not go out quickly. It should also eliminate a ton of emergency review requests developers were sending to Apple, so it probably helps Apple also.