Better terms for developers, speedier reviews, and better discovery are on tap.
We're a few days out from the WWDC keynote, but Apple is already making some announcements. Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller was put in charge of the App Store back in December, and today he sat down with The Loop's Jim Dalrymple to detail his first major changes to the App Store.

The single biggest difference is a change to Apple's traditional 70-30 revenue split for in-app subscriptions. Under the new system, 70 percent of revenue will still go to the developer and 30 percent will still go to Apple, but after users have been subscribed for more than a year, the split changes to 85-15 in the developer's favor. This change will apply to all current subscription-based apps as well, so if you've already subscribed to Netflix or Spotify, those companies will start getting a larger share of the money soon.

The 70-30 split remains unchanged for other kinds of apps. For holdouts like Amazon that still don't offer subscriptions through their apps (or any apps at all for the Apple TV), the revenue tweaks may convince them to reconsider their positions.

Apple is also making changes to make subscription-based models more appealing for other types of applications, including games and productivity apps. Developers will reportedly be able to choose from "over 200 subscription price points," which can be set differently in different territories, and developers will be able to bundle multiple apps together and offer them all through a single subscription. Developers can even offer different prices to different subscribers—users can upgrade or downgrade subscriptions based on tiers that developers set, and existing subscribers can be offered different prices than those offered to new subscribers. If you choose to increase the price of your subscriptions, you can send out messages to your users asking them to consent or unsubscribe.

The second change is one that people have already noticed—dramatically shorter review times for apps. Schiller said Apple is "never going to get rid of" App Review, but in recent months the team had been approving 50 percent of submitted apps within 24 hours and 90 percent of submitted apps within 48 hours. Reviews used to take a little over a week on average.

Finally, Apple is making a few tweaks to the app discovery process to make it easier to find new apps. The App Store itself will now be smart enough to filter out apps you've already installed from the "Featured" page, increasing the odds that it will show you an app you don't already know about. The "Categories" tab will return to enable faster browsing of different kinds of apps. Apps can be shared over social networks using a share sheet accessible by 3D Touching apps on the Home screen. And Apple will start running ads paid for by app developers—first as a beta in the summer and then as a permanent change after Apple has had time to tune its system.

The rules governing App Store ads are stringent: you'll see just one ad per search results page, and that ad has to be from a developer that already has an app in the App Store. The ad's content will match the content that you'd find on the app's landing page. Ads won't track users and ads won't be shown to children with Managed Apple IDs or to those whose Apple IDs say they're under the age of 13. Developers will be able to target their ads using keywords, user age and gender, device type and location, and more, but individual user habits and click data won't be shared with developers.

Ads will be sold to developers "through an auction system" with no minimum costs or time commitments. This setup is intended to make sure that large and small developers alike can purchase ads no matter how little they have to spend. Developers set the maximum "cost per tap" that they're willing to pay for an ad spot, but the amount that they actually pay will be affected by the amount that your competitors are willing to bid. And developers can set caps on the amount they spend so that their ads stop running when they've run out of money to spend on them.

Developers won't be charged for their ads during the beta in the summer, and the non-beta version will be rolled out in the US first before continuing to other territories.

These changes don't address all the App Store's pain points—free trials and upgrade pricing for non-subscription apps are among the oft-requested features that aren't included—but they all seem like well-considered changes that should mostly help users and developers get what they want. We'll be on the ground to cover any other App Store announcements that Apple makes during its WWDC keynote next week.