Apple unveils subscriptions for iOS App Store, bans links to out-of-app purchases - Page 5

There is no way any publisher walks away from tens of millions of customers - who are all downloading books like crazy. Apple knows this. Amazon knows this.

C.

The problem with all of these Apple restrictions is that they can't enforce each new rule without harming the usefulness of the device in some other way. At what point are you not allowed to put a link to a website of any type? What is next, no opinions other than those approved by Apple are allowed in your content? Little by little they keep locking down everything until there is no more freedom. All the while trying to spin it as if it is a good thing for end users when in fact it is all about control of the market.

We will see if they can win this battle or not. Eventually the publishers and consumers may abandon the platform in frustration if they keep chiseling away at what you are allowed to do. Instead of a rich ecosystem it will turn into a desolate wasteland populated only by brainwashed Apple fanatics. Microsoft may have a chance in this game after all.

What do Amazon charge Apple for iBooks sales on the Kindle.
What's that you say? They don't allow it?!!!!
ABUSE OF MARKET POSITION!!!!!!

C.

Subscribing to something from within iOS means that you will only use that subscription in iOS? That's news to me. I'm pretty sure I signed up for Netflix on my iPhone, but I primarily use it on my computer.

Assume Apple and Amazon pay the same to a given publisher for a book. Can Apple force Amazon to mark it up by 43% and themselves only add 10% and thus undercut Amazon?

And Apple is FORCING to give in-app subscription and purchasing at the same or lower price than outside Apple.

Yeah, and then we'll see where those companies are as well. Do you really think that Amazon and B&N are doing this for the benefit of the publishers? They're squeezing them pretty hard. Apple is being fairer than they are by just allowing them to sell in competition to them. See how far you get complaining to Amazon or B&N about not being to be able to buy from other retailers in their apps. I'm sure they will respond by opening them up to all others.

It's not Apple's role to support Amazon's business model.

C.

I did there. But your argument is essentially that Apple is being mean... abusing their position... etc.

Considering the markups and fees in TONS of other industries, I don't think they're being meanies.

I'll quote what someone wrote in the latest thread about this:


LMAO. Tell that to the whining "Not fair" people in the previous thread about this. Poor Amazon! Poor Netflix! Poor Hulu!

Meanwhile WONDERFUL developers, who I gladly support, are soaring with wonderful opportunities in iOS.

I didn't know you can install apps on kindle or that you can buy ibooks outside iTunes

Yeah, and it was not MS's role to support Netscape's business modell. They could undercut as they wanted.

You're making way too much sense. With all the shrillness here, your post will be ignored. (I thought it would, therefore be useful to highlight it).

Amazon launched an App development kit.

Betcha they don't allow an iBooks store.

C.

MS successfully bullied Netscape because one had a browser, and the other had the whole goddamn operating system.

Now Apple has an iPad. And Amazon has a Kindle reader. Which seems more equitable.
Are you suggesting the business model behind the Kindle reader is a flop?

C.

I don't agree that's true. There are large expenses in running these online stores. apple says they make little profit in doing so, and the financial industry that's analyzed this to death over the years agrees. Apple makes just enough profit running iTunes and the App Store to insure it doesn't run into the red. They don't use it as a profit center.

But Amazon does, because that's their business. They must make a decent profit on sales. Same for B&N and others.

Whether Apple is running their own servers or paying for bandwidth, it's expensive. So is the upkeep. There are a lot of people involved.

As long as Apple doesn't want to have their stores become major profit centers, those profits will be marginal, but they can't be compared to companies who are using them for their profitability. Those companies want the same, or even better profits than brick and mortar operations. And that only makes sense, as they still have to ensure their stockholders that they are a good investment.

Love to see that happen! lol... I would imagine that their will be more apps and content added than removed... RE: Sony Music threatening to remove their music from iTunes... its a game of chicken.

Apple survived just fine without the Beatles catalog and still without the Led Zep catalog. eBooks are relatively new and they lived without them... hmmm they actually lived without subscription based service too. Apple is only getting bigger and losing an app or 2 here and there will not effect them all that much. If I can't get a Skype app for the iphone or ipad I will just have to go to the website on my Mac Book Pro.

Irrelevant, it's a different scenario. Apple's free to keep the app store to themselves, much like they have with iTunes and iPods, but the moment they open it up to other developers, they can't manipulate it to give themselves an advantage in other markets such as eBooks. If you read my other posts, probably 80% of my posts are in favor of an Apple practice. I'm not against this because I'm anti-Apple, I'm against it because it's an abuse of market position and it isn't right.

Amazon is not a publisher. They are a retailer and as such they compete directly with iTunes/iBooks which is also a retailer. If Amazon offered their books through In-App purchases at the same price as on their website they would either have to take a 30% revenue drop or raise the price of the books on their website to the same price as the In-App price to comply. I think they will just pull their app and concentrate on selling eBooks through the Kindle Reader and the other tablets coming later this year. If they do, the publishers will come running to Apple to get their books into iBooks which is exactly what Apple wants.

It amazes me how many here are defending poor Amazon. They say Apple 30% cut is unfair but they don't mind Amazon getting 65% instead of 30% from publishers who don't meet the following requirements:

- List price of the ebook between $2.99~$9.99
- List price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book

Reality is Kindle doesn't have apps and you can't buy iBooks outside iTunes. Ah, and you CAN buy B&N books from Kindle

As far as I know, Amazon makes their profit on volume, not margin. However, my main line of argument wasn't that their margins were incredibly low. All I was saying is that one can't assume they are the same as a retail stores. The comment stemmed from someone justifying the 30% cut based on the retail store experience.

The point is that whether a certain behaviour is legal or not can depend on something like market share.

Oh right.
Like the Xbox? Or the PS3?

Or this..
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application...nt-Kit-525340/


C.

How can you get it through your head that Microsoft DID get paid for every person who used itunes on a windows machine? Seriously do you think Windows is free?

How about you walk into a wal-mart and try to open a minishop aisle and not pay anything to wal-mart. GADZOOKS! Why has NOONE thought of this!?!?! Think about it, its a great location, people are there to shop! You bought something there, you can just open your own shop up there too. Heck, maybe you even sold some stuff through wal-mart before. Maybe you are the owner of a company that sells through Wal-mart. Of course without people like you wal-mart would NEVER have sold a single item....so of course, it's your right to walk into wal-mart and use wal-mart to open up your own store with your own rules....hmm forget wal-mart....what did they ever do anyways?

Imagine that Amazon is making $100M selling content through the iPad.
Why would they stop doing so?

C.

The difference here is that neither the Xbox nor the PS3 had a dominant market position. If one of them had, they could be in trouble.
But in the app market already has an 82% market share, that is far higher than the Xbox or PS3.
http://www.isuppli.com/Media-Researc...t-in-2010.aspx

A 70/30 split is extremely good for the publishing market. Keep in mind Amazon keeps 65% on the Kindle and remaining 35% is split between the publisher and the author (they can get a 70/30 deal from Amazon now, thanks to competition from Apple, but it's subject to stringent conditions and only applies to books under $9.99). It only looks bad relative to the 70/30 split of the App Store, which offers so much more. That said, if Apple brought it down to 20%, they could avoid criticism and more publishers would probably get on board.

You're generalizing too much. And while your colorful story is cute, it doesn't work. No company needs to be in the Apple ecosystem who didn't start there. If they feel they don't want to be there, they don't have to move there, or they can move out.

If they don't, then it shows that they believe being there is better than not being there.

We might as well say the same things about song pricing. I remember when songs were priced between $2.75 and $3.50 per song. That's years ago without taking inflation into account. Music companies didn't think iTunes would take off, so they went along with Apple's 99 cent pricing. Boy, were they wrong! But when Apple went to a higher quality product, they demanded a 30% pay hike. That pay hike has been responsible for the great slowdown in music download growth. So Apple's "strong-arm"tactics were right, and their free pricing was wrong.

Are they making more per song now? Sure. But sales aren't as great as they would have been, so they aren't making as much as they could be.

It's very possible that selling their wares on iTunes, even with a partial pay cut, would prove more profitable than doing it the old way. After all they haven't been successful in selling subs over the Internet yet.

And it must continue to be pointed out that Apple will allow purchasing of these subs out of iTunes or the AppStore without taking a single dime from these companies. It,s not as though Apple is demanding all the money from every sub.

And then there's the other big fight Apple has been having with publishers, and that's the information about the subscriber. That was considered by the publishing industry to be critical, and it's been resolved in their favor. That's a VERY big issue, as most subs aren't paid for by the sub price, it's paid for by the advertising within the publication.

Oh please. Give up. Apple isn't selling anything through iOS. They're selling through their stores which are on devices that have both iOS and OS X on them. Please keep the two things separate.

The problem with your slippery slope argument is that you haven't shown that the slope is actually slippery, so your argument amounts to little more than an attempt to create and play on fears.

But not in this case. Amazon can choose to be in the App store. Or they can choose to go it alone invest in their Kindle reader. They can even do both.

They can't choose to be in the app store, and whine about the terms. They are there voluntarily.

C.

And why can't be Apple sued for anti competitive practices?

No it's not unfair. Apple is doing a service for those companies by allowing them into the App Store in the first place. We don't know how these companies will respond. Before everyone goes off half cocked, we have to see what will happen. So far, only Sony has said anything, and that's because they never had their app in the store before. Until we hear from Amazon and the others, we don't know what will happen.

Does iBooks have any advantage on the Kindle or Nook book readers? Does it have any disadvantage? What about Sony? How much more must Apple charge there?

Get the point?

Wow, they have to be happy for being allowed to be on App Store.

No. One thing has nothing to do with the other. They are separate. If you had to pay once before, you will now. If you had to pay more than once before, you will now as well.

I still get my content the old fashioned way, torrents and mediafire.

Then I paypal the creator direct if I like the stuff.

Seriously, do you think iPhones are free?
The problem is that Apple keeps shifting their business model. Yesterday, free apps were fine, including them using content purchased elsewhere, today that is no longer the case.

So? What's the point? Their competitors don't allow any kind of out of app purchasing on their readers. Which system is better?

you're right, Apple provides visibility for 6 of it's several hundred thousand apps...
[and currently provides visibility only for Lady GaGa and the Beatles for music].

every email i get from AmEx, Disco, and Chase have links to partner programs with everything from amazon to zappos.

I believe some of you are looking at this backwards.

Look at it this way: I am trying to make a subscription for content that I WANT on the iPad or iPhone. I am asking Apple to make that possible. Apple then develops the process for me to do that and tells me what my costs are going to be. I then factor that into my price. Afterwards Apple tells me that I can sell the same subscription outside (allowing me to do my own marketing to raise awareness!) but I have to sell it at the same price I on the iPad / iPhone which I already wanted to do. Therefore I make MORE money outside the App Store.

Apple isn't doing anything but making sure Publishers / Developers do not abuse their eco system they created, their customers (cause lets face it, something happens to the App process we always point to Apple) and the App Store they maintain and continue to make it better (this 4.3 update is a great example). Why shouldn't they get their profits as well. D&R isn't cheap, (iOS and iTunes updates, now looking like MobileMe is going to join these ranks). D&R funds have to come from someplace.

I do not feel that developers / publishers should be upset. If some of their customers are, well you are unjustified in my opinion.