Apple has suggested that if you offer subscriptions (or purchases) outside of your app that you need to do it inside your app. At the same price. Hence the whole drama over Kindle--the purchases are done on the Amazon website but Apple has stated they want 30%.
Well they do expect a cent. Because they've banned you linking to the website, and they've forced you to use their in-app billing system, and they've banned you from incentivizing customers with a lower price elsewhere and they're taking a huge cut from in-app purchases. So unless you can telepathically control how your customers sign up, Apple's going to be getting quite a few of your cents.
It's a bit more complicated than Apple getting 30% of all your sales, but it's also more complicated than Apple just letting the iOS customers choose how to buy. You'll lose some random part of that 30% depending on your customers buying habits.
If you own an iPhone, you've got a ticket and are inside Apple's themepark. You can't leave until the end of the day, or you get charged extra (ETF). Suddenly, Apple pisses off the vendors by killing off their profits. A couple of the vendors talk about going to a different, more open theme park once its announced. You're stuck inside Apple's park, and you're hungry. But the pretzel guy just left because he can't make a profit selling pretzels in Apple's theme park. Why should I be happy as a customer here again? Because Apple's made it so I can pay the pretzel guy (who is no longer here) slightly easier?
OK, pretzels. Your analogy looks like this to me: Pretzel guy has a stand inside the park, where he gives away pretzel tongs for eating hot pretzels. You want pretzels, he used to give you his mobile phone, you'd make a call, give somebody else your credit card, and the pretzels would be delivered to the park.
Now Apple says that (1) he has to sell the pretzels inside the park if he also sells them outside the park, (2) he has to charge the same price, (3) Apple muscles him for 30% of his action on sales inside the park, and (4) he can't have pretzels from outside the park delivered to you in the park. You actually can buy pretzels by phone from his store in the park, or with your web browser, but he can't put the link to his pretzel store or the phone number of his pretzel store on the pretzel tongs he gives away.
If pretzel guy can't make a profit, he leaves. If enough vendors leave, the park is less attractive and fewer people buy tickets.
So yeah, maybe as a customer you won't be happy if pretzel guy can't figure out how to make money at Apple's expense. And yeah, maybe as a developer you aren't happy if you can't figure out how to exploit Apple's customers without Apple exploiting you. And maybe everybody goes somewhere else.
Seems like the free market at work. So what's the problem here? You have choices, exercise your right to choose.
The original article pointed out that the mobile app doesn't represent all the value the customer gets from the service, then hypothesized that it represents about 30% of it; so 30% of the subscription revenue represents 100% of all the mobile service revenue.
It might be a decent argument, if he hadn't pulled that hypothesized number out of his left nostril.
That, and the fact that it's 30% of the mobile service revenue. If you sign up out-of-app, you don't pay 30%. He hypothesized (out of his right nostril, presumably ;) that all mobile users sign up via the mobile app, even though it only gives them 30% of their usage value.
In other words, "I made up random number A. Then I made up random item B. Together, they prove <really outlandish claim that will drive visitors to my blog, but has no connection to reality whatsoever>." I hear AOL is looking for writers.
