Apple has been facing a lot of criticism and antitrust issues lately when it comes to the App Store, the app availability, and the pricing that they have set for the developers. The issue came to light after the big fight between Apple and Epic Games over the App Store fees. It seems that Apple is trying to mend things and the image of the App Store now by simply reducing its fees for some developers. This would only include those developers who are earning less than $1million in revenue annually.
The App Store Small Business Program will come into effect after January 1 and will see a fee reduction of 30-15% for the developers that qualify for this. The decision will give more advantage to small app developers or someone who is relatively new to this. As per Apple, the decision will impact a large number of developers on the App Store and new developers which join in 2020 are automatically qualified for it. While the older developers will have to apply based on their revenue in the year 2020.
As per the experts, the change will affect 98% of the companies that have their apps on the App Store, but the revenue will be impacted by less than 5% Apple gets the major revenue from the other 2%. The change was certainly expected from Apple after the case with Epic Games, where other developers were also expecting a sort of relaxation in the commission fee. Now it would be interesting to see how developers react to the decision in the future.