Google has made a change to their transaction fee schedule for Android Developers that, eventually, works in their favor. Effective January 1, 2018, developers who have a subscriber who has been using their app for 12 months will get their transaction fee cut from 30% to 15%. This only impacts subscriptions and not one-off in-app purchases.
Google has outlined the rules of engagement on this for developers and there is a bit of wiggle room on it. Basically to quality for the cut, the subscriber has to fall in one of these areas over a 12 months period.
- Subscribers within a grace period
- Subscribers with introductory pricing
- Subscribers who upgrade or downgrade to a different plan
- Subscribers who re-sign up within two months of canceling
The move is aimed to give developers more money and mirrors, to an extent, what Apple did in 2017.
Apple’s cut were more comprehensive than what Google has proposed. Apple cut the transaction fee to 15% for basically any subscription and did not have a timeline requirement.
For end users, the takeaway from all of this is if you really like an app and it offers a subscription, the longer you keep that subscription (beyond 12 months), the more money goes to the developer. That, in turn and in theory, means you will get more updates as they will have the funds to develop that app.
