Everything you need to know about the new Developers Union

The mobile app market has boomed exponentially in recent years and is expected to be worth around $189 billion. Despite such incredible growth, many developers working within the iOS market feel that they are not being given a fair share of the spoils. A recent decision to form a union has brought together 35 developers with the intention of campaigning for more representative regulations. Here’s a look at what sparked this movement and what the union’s aims are.

Free trials

The first point of concern and one of the founding concepts that brought the union together is the issue of free trials. As it stands, the current regulations and terms of use for Apple’s App Store don’t allow paid apps to provide a free trial. According to the 35 developers that have banded together, this is restricting the potential for success and is making it more difficult for content creators to increase downloads.

A statement from the union outlined the crucial part that free trials played in the success of mac developers before the inception of iOS. Pushing for free trials to be implemented into the App Store publishing process is the first order of business on the Developer Union agenda and its members are hoping that Apple will instigate these changes later this summer.

Revenue policy

The other major concern that the union brought to the attention of Apple recently is the issue of a more representative revenue policy. Since the App Store was first created, the revenue share has remained set at 70/30 in favour of Apple. However, with more competition than ever and rapidly increasing industry revenue figures, many developers believe that they should be entitled to a larger share.

It is a core belief of the Developers Union that content creators who publish quality content on the App Store should be able to make a living from it but the current policy makes it very hard to do that. The members of the union recently published an open letter addressed to Apple which outlines several points of concern regarding the current state of the market.

The first step will be to push for the implementation of free trials but it seems that the union will push for more changes in the future with the intent to create a fairer and more representative industry environment.