Apple to Drop Its Cut of App Store Subscription Revenue to 15% After the First Year

Apple is dropping its cut of App Store subscription revenue from 30% to 15% after the first year, according to an iMore report. Additionally, subscriptions will be available to apps in all categories.

Where, previously, subscriptions were only available to streaming media, cloud services, news, and dating apps, they're now available to all categories. Most interestingly, after the traditional 70/30 split in the first year of subscriptions, Apple will only be asking for 85/15 for subsequent years.

Other changes to the App Store reportedly include the filtering of installed apps from Apple's featured lists and the ability for developers place ads for their app in App Store search results. The ads will be clearly labelled as such.


These changes are said to take effect starting today. Details about the Search ads should soon be live here.

Update:
In an interview with Phil Schiller, the Verge has learned that search ads will appear at the top of iOS App Store search results, and will be identified as a search ad, showing a light blue background with a blue ad button on it. Only one ad will appear at a time or none at all. You can see an example ad below.