What new revenue streams will Apple seek if they are forced to open their platform?

What makes you think that opening it up will kill the app store revenues? Android is more open and you can put competing markets on there and yet the huge majority of all profits is from the play store

So if there's somehow a mass migration of platform developers that suddenly make all their apps free with IN-APP purchases using direct payments outside of the Apple eco system.

They'll quickly change the future Developer App agreements where you have to pay way more up front.

Andrewcw said:

So if there's somehow a mass migration of platform developers that suddenly make all their apps free with IN-APP purchases using direct payments outside of the Apple eco system.

They'll quickly change the future Developer App agreements where you have to pay way more up front.

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The challenge for them will be if they get the same amount of downloads and traffic as they did on the App Store.

If some apps are available both on the App Store and some third-party store, what is the user's motivation for using the third-party store?

If they have the apps and the in-app purchases at a lower price, maybe it's worth creating an account on the alternate app store but the incentive would have to be pretty big.

I have bought maybe a handful of apps in over 10 years on the iPhone. That includes in-app purchases and I have not bought one single subscription.

App developers have migrated to the subscription model but there's still a lot of utility from free apps.

For instance I don't subscribe to 1 Password. I just sync between the app and my Mac through Wifi. It would be nice to have it sync by itself but not worth paying for that service.

And some of my most frequently-used apps are things like banking apps so they're completely free. If Chase and BofA offered their apps on some 3rd party app store as well as the Apple App Store, why would anyone bother to get them through the 3rd party app store?

But some apps which are on multiple app store will probably find that they get a lot more downloads from Apple than these other app stores.

Presumably companies like Spotify and maybe Netflix will only distribute through other App Stores. So people who really want to subscribe to those services will have to install and create an account on these other App Stores.


So how many of the top 10 or top 100 apps which require purchase of some kind to be useful will migrate to other app stores to reduce their commissions? That is where the test will be, how many migrate away from the App Store and offer lower prices to get their users to follow them.

Or they may decide to distribute across multiple app stores but find that they get way more downloads and sales through Apple than others and net more profits there.

Thegn said:

I've been pondering this for a week or so, but the front page article made me finally decide to post something.

I have owned both iPhones and Androids; I have no particular favorite as I think they both suck for different reasons. However, I'm wondering if the opening of the Apple ecosystem in the EU will force Apple to pivot in the way they handle one of the things I appreciate most about Apple - their at least fig-leaf level respect for their users' privacy. Given the large amount of money they rake in from the app store, I can see them being pressured by shareholders to seek alternate revenue streams, and one low-hanging fruit would be to back off from their privacy focus and be more willing to sell out their users to data brokers.

There may be other revenue streams I'm overlooking, but that looks like the big one from where I'm standing. Any thoughts?

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It will be an absolute cold day in hell when Apple goes back on its privacy stance. It’s far far too deeply engrained in the company. And it wouldn’t be good business for them anyways - their foray into health monitoring with the Apple Watch has enormous potential and you could kiss it goodbye if people didn’t trust Apple to keep their data safe.

My assumption is that they will up the developer fees and lower the App Store costs and not much will change.

Whatever concrete steps Apple takes, they're going to ramp up their advertising scare tactics to the maximum they think they can get away with. They want to imply that their store is trusted and clean and any others must by definition be full of malware and shady developers looking to track your every move.

It blows my mind that people on here talk like Apple is going to go under if they have a small decrease in their app store profits. They will only make $32,000,000,000 in profit for just the app store alone instead of $34,000,000,000 and this is somehow a major dire problem for Apple

It seems like Apple users who have never had the option of multiple 'stores' think that this would gut the products on the AppStore when in reality it's probably going to mostly affect in-app subscriptions coming back to the apps themselves rather than pointing the users to a website to sign up, and other small around-the-edges things. Very little is likely to change, and what does change probably won't change very much.

The vast majority of users will only ever use the AppStore anyway because they prefer that and because it's the default. The vast and overwhelming number of apps won't be exclusive to any single store outside the AppStore.

I am loathe to create new accounts for every app or website.

So I have to really think if it offers me something that's worth registering for.

I don't know if my attitude is typical but people nowadays have dozens or hundreds of accounts. So maybe one more doesn't hurt or people are fed up.

If I'm right, there will have to be some enticements for people to try another app store. Just because MS builds an iOS app store doesn't mean they will come.

See, that's the thing though. I already have a relationship with Microsoft. With Google. With Amazon. With [insert lots of other names of companies here]. So buying apps directly from those companies strikes me as a convenience—leveraging preexisting relationships, discounts, or whatever other construct may benefit me somehow. I think enough people will connect the dots similarly that it will be worth the while for large companies like Microsoft to create their own stores on iOS once they're able to do so.

Put another way, I'm not looking for reasons to not use the Apple App Store, but I'm not going to artificially limit myself if I can personally benefit from using alternatives, either.

Will they offer something that they won't distribute through the App Store?

I don't know how many 365 subscriptions are paid through an iOS app. I would think most people who have Office or other MS software will go through Windows to subscribe and pay for their subscription?

The one thing I know of that they want but Apple has prevented is a cloud gaming app of some kind. Sounds pretty niche to me but it may make some number of users happy.

It's highly unlikely that a competitor would go to the trouble to build an app store just to get a (smaller) cut of app sales, especially if the cut is grossly reduced for IAP and Subscription revenue.

Competitors building 'stores' probably have an ulterior motive. Looking at the relatively big Android alternatives you have things like Amazon which for a while tried to be an alternate app store on Google's platform (it worked on everyday phones) and while that product still nominally exists, it's more oriented towards their closed ecosystem. Samsung likewise wants to do their flavor of lock-in.

LordDaMan said:

What makes you think that opening it up will kill the app store revenues? Android is more open and you can put competing markets on there and yet the huge majority of all profits is from the play store

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Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Meta, Spotify, Netflix, and Autodesk for example will have their own stores and git less foot traffic far less than Apple, Epic tried failed and sued Google, I'm sure there will be lawsuits and more legal action against Apple even with this change in the EU, I also believe this change won't lead to a pot of gold, steaming hasn't and neither will this. It will however lead to Apple charging the true cost of supporting the infrastructure and that will also apply to the new AppStore's they too are going to charge to be in their stores.

wco81 said:

The challenge for them will be if they get the same amount of downloads and traffic as they did on the App Store.

If some apps are available both on the App Store and some third-party store, what is the user's motivation for using the third-party store?

If they have the apps and the in-app purchases at a lower price, maybe it's worth creating an account on the alternate app store but the incentive would have to be pretty big.

I have bought maybe a handful of apps in over 10 years on the iPhone. That includes in-app purchases and I have not bought one single subscription.

App developers have migrated to the subscription model but there's still a lot of utility from free apps.

For instance I don't subscribe to 1 Password. I just sync between the app and my Mac through Wifi. It would be nice to have it sync by itself but not worth paying for that service.

And some of my most frequently-used apps are things like banking apps so they're completely free. If Chase and BofA offered their apps on some 3rd party app store as well as the Apple App Store, why would anyone bother to get them through the 3rd party app store?

But some apps which are on multiple app store will probably find that they get a lot more downloads from Apple than these other app stores.

Presumably companies like Spotify and maybe Netflix will only distribute through other App Stores. So people who really want to subscribe to those services will have to install and create an account on these other App Stores.


So how many of the top 10 or top 100 apps which require purchase of some kind to be useful will migrate to other app stores to reduce their commissions? That is where the test will be, how many migrate away from the App Store and offer lower prices to get their users to follow them.

Or they may decide to distribute across multiple app stores but find that they get way more downloads and sales through Apple than others and net more profits there.

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Epic didn't so they sued, the true cost will now hit the smaller developers, the only winner's will be some of the bigger outfits with on going profitable business plans. EU and some of the other governmental officials think they are helping but they are not.

wco81 said:

I am loathe to create new accounts for every app or website.

So I have to really think if it offers me something that's worth registering for.

I don't know if my attitude is typical but people nowadays have dozens or hundreds of accounts. So maybe one more doesn't hurt or people are fed up.

If I'm right, there will have to be some enticements for people to try another app store. Just because MS builds an iOS app store doesn't mean they will come.

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The steaming world was supposed to be a pot of gold but it's not, this will turn out to be the same. The foot traffic (clicks will be less for Google, Microsoft, and Adobe with their however the clutter will less on the Apple store, and it will be a Epic experience.

Also some of mid level developers who stay put might have an easier time GoodNotes, Notability, Figma and Affinity with the big three not being on the same page?

It's going to be ads. Apple has been quietly growing a huge ads business, and as one of exactly 2 companies that is immune to ATT, it gets a lot more data than is available to partners, so while Apple will NEVER sell user data, I think they'll start opening up their ad network to more than just App installs - iAds may make a comeback for example, and will have way better targeting available than anyone but Google, but Apple can offer better rates than Google, and more surfaces to place ads on.

Horatio said:

It's going to be ads. Apple has been quietly growing a huge ads business, and as one of exactly 2 companies that is immune to ATT, it gets a lot more data than is available to partners, so while Apple will NEVER sell user data, I think they'll start opening up their ad network to more than just App installs - iAds may make a comeback for example, and will have way better targeting available than anyone but Google, but Apple can offer better rates than Google, and more surfaces to place ads on.

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It’s not going to be ads. Ads degrade the user experience and negatively impact customer sat which is Apple’s North Star. Targeted ads, even if a user has explicitly opted in to them, decrease a user’s perception of privacy which is vital to Apple’s ambitions in finance and health.

There are many many more avenues for revenue growth that have zero to do with ads.

wrylachlan said:

It’s not going to be ads. Ads degrade the user experience and negatively impact customer sat which is Apple’s North Star. Targeted ads, even if a user has explicitly opted in to them, decrease a user’s perception of privacy which is vital to Apple’s ambitions in finance and health.

There are many many more avenues for revenue growth that have zero to do with ads.

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Apple puts ads in the App store without negatively affecting CSAT. Apple puts ads in the Settings app, again no complaints*. Apple has figured out how to do ads without violating the perception of privacy. I think they can find ways to do ads that are effective and relatively unobtrusive - they may not be as effective as Google ads, but they may be more acceptable.

* that I know of

wrylachlan said:

There are many many more avenues for revenue growth that have zero to do with ads.

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How do you explain Apple's enshitification of the App Store, then? It's a sea of sponsored results already. Apple's Weather and Stock apps on iOS have dubious, contextually-embedded AppleNews links which contain (drum roll) advertising. Apple allows News content providers to position their own ads, or hand over those slots for Apple to sell instead, sharing the proceeds.

If anything, the exclusivity of the "walled garden" is going to allow Apple to charge a premium, even if the buyers are going to have to do without the granularity of audience identifying information that Meta and Google offer. Yes, seeing advertising creep into Apple products and services fills me with apoplectic rage. I'm not lobbying for it or excusing it in any way, I'm just arguing that Tim Cook's Apple is never going to leave that amount of money on the table.

EDIT: Brutally ninja'ed by Horatio. I have a shame.

I’m thinking about the volume. The volume of ads they would need to foist on people to make up for the loss of App Store revenue would be substantial. So, while I don’t doubt Apple will continue their rather measured approach to building out their ad network, I don’t for a second believe that Apple would go all in on ads to extent necessary to offset App Store loss of revenue in a ‘the EU goes nuclear’ scenario.

As for Apple’s current ads, you get ads for apps in an App Store. You get ads in News. And you get news links in a few apps. At least as far as I’ve seen, the ads in News do not appear to be tightly targeted at all. As best I can tell all the ads I see seem like reasonable placements based on the context they’re in rather than any element of my personal information that Apple has.

Now maybe if I clicked more of those ads there would be some intelligence applied to show me more of what I click on… but I don’t click on ads generally so I can’t comment.

wrylachlan said:

It’s not going to be ads. Ads degrade the user experience and negatively impact customer sat which is Apple’s North Star.

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Not buying this because Apple has already degraded the user experience by way of first party ads.

Getting accurate numbers is tricky as Apple doesn't break down the percentage of iPhone/iPadOS vs. MacOS in a clear way and a lot of the published numbers are stale but we're talking at least high 10's of billions (thousands of millions) of US Dollars/year in profit after costs from that ~30% cut. The last figure from 2021 showed an upward trend and they were at $85 billion at that time. It's likely they're over $100b/year in profit. They also stated that in 2022 they processed $1.1 Trillion in app store payments, so 30% of that (even minus overhead) is probably an even bigger number.

There seems to be some crazy doom and gloom assuming those numbers will drop to near zero when there's no evidence that's likely to be the case. The majority of users will continue to use the AppStore for most or all of their purchases and most of those purchases will probably still earn Apple a 30% cut. There will be some instances where a few users will be persuaded to use a second App Store, and those will likely only do so for specific apps.

If Apple's gross profit per year goes down from $170,000,000,000 USD to $165,000,000,000 USD, I somehow don't think they'll go into panic mode in Cupertino and start spamming lock screen ads or anything of the sort. Even if they lost 100% of their App Store Profits, they'll still be very much in the black.

Nevarre said:

There seems to be some crazy doom and gloom assuming those numbers will drop to near zero when there's no evidence that's likely to be the case. The majority of users will continue to use the AppStore for most or all of their purchases and most of those purchases will probably still earn Apple a 30% cut. There will be some instances where a few users will be persuaded to use a second App Store, and those will likely only do so for specific apps.

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I think this is spot on. I don't personally like the App Store, and go out of my way to avoid it. If I need something, I try to link in directly to that app, download it, and get out. Were there third party App Stores that offered specific discounts meaningful to me, or access to otherwise verboten software in the Apple App Store like emulators, I'd probably use them, but only for those narrow reasons. But I seriously doubt the great unwashed public, already largely terrified of technology (probably for good reason), is going to stray beyond the guardrails.

Whoever said up-thread that Apple, in the face of having to open up to alt stores, is going to ramp up the marketing machine to emphasize the safety and sanctity of their offering, was also correct, IMO. People not in the know will be terrified to use anything else. The potential for a long-term threat to Apple's bottom line is insignificant. Which is why I wonder why Apple goes into full-tantrum mode and rides its positions straight into the ground. At some point, pragmatism should take over in order to retain control over the outcome. The eBook case immediately comes to mind as a situation where Apple's die-on-this-hill obstinance created a far worse situation for them than if they'd just searched for an optimal solution earlier on in the legal process.

cateye said:

Whoever said up-thread that Apple, in the face of having to open up to alt stores, is going to ramp up the marketing machine to emphasize the safety and sanctity of their offering, was spot on. People not in the know will be terrified to use anything else.

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Also me, heh. Just a few words of "You can get this App from your trusted partner, the AppStore already on your phone" or what not is likely to pass muster with the EU. In markets with less regulation, they may sometimes push that boundary.

cateye said:

The long-term threat to Apple's bottom line is likely insignificant. Which is why I wonder, somewhat, why Apple rides its positions like this straight into the ground. At some point, pragmatism should take over in order to retain some control over the outcome. The eBook case immediately comes to mind as a situation where Apple's die-on-this-hill obstinance created a far worse situation for them than if they'd just searched for an optimal solution earlier on in the legal process.

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Apple already makes a lot of business decisions that leave people scratching their heads.

Indeed. I'd say Apple's approach to legal challenges has often been "We're right and whoever says otherwise is wrong and we're unwilling to compromise." I think they just don't keep people around in their legal department who are going to tell them a compromise position could be better for them.

The doom & gloom I see is Facebook rolling their own app store as the only place to get blue-app / Instagram / WhatsApp, and bypassing the "don't do shady things with API access to places you know you aren't supposed to be". I remember the silent audio track background shenanigans, and the "install an MDM profile for $5 in gift card credit".

This guy on Threads has another idea: a western WeChat, and thinking about it, Apple already probably has 50%+ of what's needed there

Excluding public social media features, which I don't think Apple wants to offer because of the inevitability of brand-damaging entanglement in stupid political fights, what does WeChat have that Apple doesn't already offer at the platform level? Is the idea that they should bundle all of this into a single app so they can offer it as a package to Android users?

If Apple is forced to allow alternative app stores/non-Apple IAPs, only the big players will take advantage, the Microsofts, Googles, and Amazons. For everyone else, they will stick to Apple's App Store. Building your own payment infrastructure is not a simple task. And if another party just steps in, they will still take a huge chunk of the transaction. It may not be 30%, but switching to be available on the alternative may still not be worth the work if the alt app store takes 15%-20%.

I am also thinking that unless pre-empted by whatever court order forces Apple to allow alternative App Stores, Apple will tell devs that they can be in the App Store, or the alternative, not both.

Entegy said:

If Apple is forced to allow alternative app stores/non-Apple IAPs, only the big players will take advantage, the Microsofts, Googles, and Amazons. For everyone else, they will stick to Apple's App Store. Building your own payment infrastructure is not a simple task. And if another party just steps in, they will still take a huge chunk of the transaction. It may not be 30%, but switching to be available on the alternative may still not be worth the work if the alt app store takes 15%-20%.

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Not everything needs a payment structure. It will be mostly smaller players who don't want to us ethe app store because of its restrictions. You'll see for instance the iOS equivalent of F-Droid and other similar things.

Entegy said:

I am also thinking that unless pre-empted by whatever court order forces Apple to allow alternative App Stores, Apple will tell devs that they can be in the App Store, or the alternative, not both.

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I can see them doing that and getting faced with a whopper of a court case against them.

Entegy said:

If Apple is forced to allow alternative app stores/non-Apple IAPs, only the big players will take advantage, the Microsofts, Googles, and Amazons. For everyone else, they will stick to Apple's App Store. Building your own payment infrastructure is not a simple task. And if another party just steps in, they will still take a huge chunk of the transaction. It may not be 30%, but switching to be available on the alternative may still not be worth the work if the alt app store takes 15%-20%.

Click to expand...

I'd flip this on its head as noted. The companies who most want to get in on the action are ones that want to distribute something that's not allowed and those three in particular have no reason to move away from the App Store. They're all already handling subscriptions outside of the App Store now and most of the apps being distributed by those big guys are free at the point of download in the App Store.

The ones who are interested in some alternative are the apps that are currently excluded or experiencing some pressure with respect to costs or allowable features today.

Entegy said:

I am also thinking that unless pre-empted by whatever court order forces Apple to allow alternative App Stores, Apple will tell devs that they can be in the App Store, or the alternative, not both.

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Above in the thread, where Apple is supposed to be listening to their attorneys who try to adjust what Apple is doing to not draw the ire of regulators now that they've reached potential monopoly status? Yeah, this would be a situation where those lawyers should be screaming.

Besides, there's equally shitty ways to exercise soft power-- want to be featured on the App Store? Maybe that gets tied to some exclusivity or a reciprocal agreement where the app hypes up the App Store somehow.

Nevarre said:

I'd flip this on its head as noted. The companies who most want to get in on the action are ones that want to distribute something that's not allowed

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The thing is, other major players have these. Google is so interested in shipping "real" Chrome for iOS that they're apparently already developing it in anticipation of future rule changes. If the walls really came down, Google could hypothetically do anything up to and including offering the Play Store on iOS with the ability to run unmodified Android apps. Microsoft is probably interested in shipping a native app for its cloud gaming service. The end of prohibitions on embedded stores and apps-within-apps would open up Apple's platforms to Zuckerberg's metaverse ambitions.

Entegy said:

If Apple is forced to allow alternative app stores/non-Apple IAPs, only the big players will take advantage, the Microsofts, Googles, and Amazons. For everyone else, they will stick to Apple's App Store. Building your own payment infrastructure is not a simple task. And if another party just steps in, they will still take a huge chunk of the transaction. It may not be 30%, but switching to be available on the alternative may still not be worth the work if the alt app store takes 15%-20%.

I am also thinking that unless pre-empted by whatever court order forces Apple to allow alternative App Stores, Apple will tell devs that they can be in the App Store, or the alternative, not both.

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Credit cards charge < 3% for being in the middle of transactions, online and offline. That's an example of what a financial organization considers "worth it" to set up a payment infrastructure. Why so little? Because there's competition in the markets. If MasterCard takes too much, retailers will stop accepting it.

The lowest cost cards take less than 2%.

You have very unrealistic ideas of how much it costs to verify the identity of a seller and payee, validate their intent to commit the transaction, and even take on the liability in case you've screwed up. That's what credit companies do.

If you want a purer take on how much it costs to provide the money transfer element of that, look at what Venmo charges for money transfers from one Venmo user's account to another.

I think the reasons why credit cards and bank fees are so low and there's so much competition in those markets is they're mature markets that have been heavily regulated for most of a century. The regulation has made them have to compete, and they do compete, and we all reap the benefit of that in low fees, reciprocal services, etc.

There are real costs to running an app store but I doubt the financial end of it is a small part.

LordDaMan said:

Not everything needs a payment structure. It will be mostly smaller players who don't want to us ethe app store because of its restrictions. You'll see for instance the iOS equivalent of F-Droid and other similar things.

I can see them doing that and getting faced with a whopper of a court case against them.

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Yeah that would be a clear antitrust violation right there. You don't even have to be an Apple-sized company for such agreements to be illegal. That's already illegal at the small company scale.

Shavano said:

I think the reasons why credit cards and bank fees are so low and there's so much competition in those markets is they're mature markets that have been heavily regulated for most of a century. The regulation has made them have to compete, and they do compete, and we all reap the benefit of that in low fees, reciprocal services, etc.

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But Steam takes about the same as Apple. On Windows, an open platform where there are nominally multiple competitors. So network effects alone seem sufficient to create these kinds of outcomes, even absent technical or contractual measures to prevent third-party stores.

This is kind of obvious, when you think about it. Software has no incremental cost. Theoretically, all that has to happen for a developer to come out ahead through a sales channel that takes 30% vs. 3% is that they have to sell ~40% more through it. You're very likely to sell at least 40% more through Steam than by asking for credit card numbers on your web site or using (only) one of their smaller competitors. Because Steam isn't just providing generic payment processing; they're providing low-friction purchasing, as well as discoverability.

In some ways this could be seen as a consequence of a series of technical failures. If operating systems were bulletproof enough that you could safely run random software obtained from anywhere, if one-touch payments were a universal system or browser-level feature, if search engines were smart enough to not incentivize the open web to become mostly SEO spam, perhaps we'd be living in a world where market-dominant app stores weren't a standard pattern. But that's not how things turned out. On this timeline, users find the convenience and trustworthiness of major app stores extremely compelling, and consequently those stores get to charge a lot for their services.

Shavano said:

Credit cards charge < 3% for being in the middle of transactions, online and offline. That's an example of what a financial organization considers "worth it" to set up a payment infrastructure. Why so little? Because there's competition in the markets. If MasterCard takes too much, retailers will stop accepting it.

The lowest cost cards take less than 2%.

You have very unrealistic ideas of how much it costs to verify the identity of a seller and payee, validate their intent to commit the transaction, and even take on the liability in case you've screwed up. That's what credit companies do.

If you want a purer take on how much it costs to provide the money transfer element of that, look at what Venmo charges for money transfers from one Venmo user's account to another.

I think the reasons why credit cards and bank fees are so low and there's so much competition in those markets is they're mature markets that have been heavily regulated for most of a century. The regulation has made them have to compete, and they do compete, and we all reap the benefit of that in low fees, reciprocal services, etc.

There are real costs to running an app store but I doubt the financial end of it is a small part.

Click to expand...

I've worked in retail IT, including eCommerce business, and have spearheaded projects that involve setting up payment platforms.

You do not just simply take a customer's card number and charge it yourself via your bank. You will require a platform of some sort to process the payment. Let's take Square who has an eCommerce API as one quick example. 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. Suddenly a huge chunk of that 99¢ in-app purchase goes to Square instead of you.

However I was wrong to use the word "payments" and should have said "platform". Payments is only one part of it. There's also distribution. The point of my post is that very few except the largest of developers will set up their own platforms to replicate both distribution and payment. It's one thing If Joe Developer is just posting a link to the app installer from their OneDrive because it's a free app that breaks an App Store rule. It's another to actually come up with an App Store distribution and payment platform.

Let's say Epic gets its way and implements an App Store. Right now apparently they take a 12% cut, which sounds great, but apparently to get that low, the buyer agrees to pay the transaction costs, which isn't legal in all jurisdictions. Otherwise, the cut is 25%, which isn't far off from 30%.

Shavano said:

You have very unrealistic ideas of how much it costs to verify the identity of a seller and payee, validate their intent to commit the transaction, and even take on the liability in case you've screwed up. That's what credit companies do.

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Credit card companies are a part of the financial landscape of a market writ large that existed long before them and although they have significant input into the rules of the marketplace, they don't own the entire verticals of commerce. Apple has a lot of control within their slice of the economy, and while they still have to interface with CC companies, they're holding a lot of cards up their proverbial turtleneck sleeves. They can't run their overhead percentage rates for developers to zero because they're paying something to the credit card companies and own other overhead like printing their own gift cards (another can of worms.)

That said, they also have the leverage to set up their own banking with their own (partnered) credit card and can set the rules for customers that use it (obviously everywhere, but certainly with the App Store.)

The difference in the level of control is that Apple currently owns the identity management of the seller and the payee. They have multiple means to ensure that the person logged in to the device transacting the sale is the person they think it is, and since App Store purchases don't really have resale value it makes scamming the system harder. Because they can guarantee relatively low fraud rates and are dealing at tremendous volume they're paying towards the very low end "less than 2%" scale, not at the Square small customer scale of 2.9% + transaction fee. They control the entire circumstances around "intent to buy" provided that the actual person at the screen or keyboard is the owner of the Apple ID and they have multiple checks built into that process-- biometric, old fashioned passwords, etc. The cost of distributing the goods is extremely minimal. The liability is also very limited on a per transaction basis due to the payments tending to be lots of extremely small transactions and not fewer larger transactions as is the usage pattern of credit cards for some people.

For a 3rd party app store, whoever runs it might not be able to leverage all of the benefits Apple has already baked in to their platform. They'd have to own their own process. Whatever real costs Apple has per transaction, a 3rd party app store will possibly lack the economy of scale and negotiating power that Apple has and would likely pay at least somewhat higher rates. Obviously Google/Microsoft/Amazon can leverage their existing infrastructure but anyone else setting up app stores to say distribute the kinds of apps forbidden to Apple customers currently, like classic game emulators, they'd have more overhead.