From my private talk with my source in Apple I had been told that Apple is discussing staring special subsidies for authors of important iPhone apps.
Such program can hit the Chinese authors first and later EU ones. US will be in the last batch. Another possibility will be secret private agreements about Apple rate cuts.

Such strange behavior is necessary as despite each smartphone is becoming more expensive it is fewer new iPhones being sold this year and coming year is expected another 25% drop, and lot of people with good income who are long time users are not buying much applications anymore.

Usually as market share crosses 10% (Apple can cross it in January already in many markets) you will see lot of developers abandoning applications and leaving only security updates and minor fixes. So, Apple management now hope to push good amount of money to stimulate most valuable authors and companies.