Apple announced some app store changes today: Ads and new rev share for subscriptions. This was nicely packaged as a App Store 2.0 story, but represents mostly catch up and remedies for several unsustainable terms they've had in rev shares. Play and Ads launched Search Ads in Play last year, and has been offering the same 85/15 subscription rev share to media companies since 2015.

Apple has been under a lot of pressure from media subscription companies (e.g. Spotify, Netflix) and users (and possibly regulators) that 70/30 rev share is too expensive given their significant content costs. We believe this is one of the major motivators for Apple's change here.

Play has allowed subscriptions for all categories for many years and the same 85/15 rev share to media companies since 2015: We have had a behind the scenes effort called the Living Room Accelerator Program (LRAP) since April of 2015 that has been offering 85/15 rev share to media partners. It has been pretty successful in getting partners to adopt our billing and grow their business on Android (Netflix, Showtime, HBONow etc).

Subscription apps are the fastest growing revenue category and largest revenue category in the US outside of games. LRAP contributed significantly to this acceleration.

Apple did do a very nice job packaging what is mostly catch up. It is unfortunate we did not get out in front of this as we could have done the same before them. All this said, this move signals much more serious approach from Apple around their subscription billing platform — we have been investing here but will be looking at intensifying our focus here in the near future.