WandaDave

I'm not at all suggesting Apple distrubute applications for free, it just needs to be proportonate. I appriciate it's not cheap to provide the tools and infrastructure to deliver applications, but Apple have decided to keep that ecosystem closed (for possibly the right reasons on security). Bear in mind though, Apple typically host the binaries but in a lot of cases other content is side loaded (e.g. game assets, Netflix video) and support for multiplayer Fortnite is handled by Epic - they pay for the infrastructure. 

Qualcomm, you could argue that they do prop up the value of the iphone. Without a modem, the smartphone wouldn't be very smart.  I am not supportive of the QCM model either, but i do see their stance as similar. QCM were seeking a value as a percentage of the overal device not their sole contribution. Apple are doing a similar thing.

Btw, Epic charge a 5% royalty after the first $1M of gross revenue. I assume they have similar investment in the tooling costs.

Thinking back to the Apple vs. Qualcomm dispute.

Apple was upset that QCM charged a royalty rate based on the selling price of the end devide rather than just the modem component provided by QCM.
Here we have Apple charging a 30% royalty for content, irrespective of how much they have contributed in the development of the application. In the QCM instance, Apple had the choice to use a different modem supplier, developers on IOS don't have a choice.

What's different in these two cases ?