Apple unveils subscriptions for iOS App Store, bans links to out-of-app purchases - Page 10

There you said it, they already have existing web stores and subscription models in place, which means they do not need an iOS app in order to exist and run their business. There are only two reasons for creating an iOS app...

1. Added value to existing customers - allow current customers to access their content on the iOS devices. Even with IAP in the app, these customers are aware of other methods to purchase content and if it's not a huge inconvenience to do so, would probably still continue to.

2. Get new customers - Take advantage of the platform's size to market your warez to new customers. These customers only discover your business because you made it available on Apple's platform. And while they may make a purchase through IAP, that may not always be the case. There's nothing that says they can't discover an alternative payment system, it's just that I can't link directly to one from within the app. I could still provide a link to product information or support that could eventually lead to my online store.

Nooooooo, my God, i don't know if you can't unddesrstand my poor English but no, we were not talking about Kindle or eBay App, but the transactions done with them, they're NOT using Apple resources when you buy an eBay item or a Kindle book, so they're not using the App Store.


Do you want I show the list of iTunes App Store receipts I have?

Fine.


Here you ignored the fact that Apple has removed the option for a developer to send the customer to their online store from within the app. In giving the customer the "choice" of using in app purchases, they removed the choice of clicking a link in the app to go to the website.


Here you ignored the fact that a companies current prices are based on their current costs. Requiring these companies to utilize Apples services which may cost more than their existing system impacts their bottom line, but Apple has given them no flexibility to change their prices based on delivery costs. So they ultimately just have to raise all their prices.


Fact: There was no billing cost incurred by Apple until Apple said you have to use our services if you wish to remain in the app store because they weren't using Apple's services.

Do I really need to go on?

Yes, if that publication came from the App Store. A store is a store.
Publishers pay subscription firms to get and maintain their sub base. They have companies package and ship those subs. Do you think they pay them? Of course they do. Apple will host any app that's downloaded from their store. They bill for the publisher, and now they've agreed to collect and give the publisher, should the subscriber agree, information they've been demanding. I see no problem with any of this.

And, yes, it does matter that Apple only get paid from a small percentage of developers, those with free apps. Why, because it's a benefit to us, their customers. And that's the most important reason.

They wouldn't get to that point because Apple requires the in app purchase feature to be implemented.

So, allowing a customer to purchase "in app" or "out of app" is only .... the illusion of choice ?.... are you sure you're not a politician .... or a contortionist ? You seem to be "talking out of both sides of your mouth" at the same time.
What ever you're smoking, I'd wish you would share.

My point was does Apple being generous (no charge for hosting free apps) in one area justify something that almost amounts to extortion in another (taking a 30% cut of subscription revenues just to facilitate a transaction)?

Apple should implement in-app subscriptions, but they shouldn't make them or in-app purchases a requirement for cross platform services.

You know, I really have to tell you something here. You don't seem to be understanding anything we're saying. You keep repeating the same untruths over and again.

Apple is SENDING customers to every company when a customer buys something in the App Store. Why is this such a hard concept for you? It's really very simple. Publisher puts sub in the app store. Customer subscribes. They now have customer they didn't have. That's Apple sending a customer to the publisher.

Otherwise, the publisher has to hire a subcontractor to do this for them. If you've ever received a subscription offer in the mail, that offer wasn't sent by the publisher, though it looks as though it's been. That's a company that specializes in this, doing that mailing for them.

When you get a letter telling you that your sub is about to expire, who does that? The publisher? No, it's the speciality company again. When you send your check in, or your credit card, who does that go to? Well, I hope that by now you know.

Apple is doing the same thing here, except they charge less.

Folks keeps saying this except that if Apple plays no part in it then how did the content get on the device that Apple developed, manufactured, marketed, sold and delivered?

Apple sure as hell played a part in this chain of events. Amazon has the Kindle ecosystem and when the purchase occurs on that which they paid for then Apple gets no cut. The massive growth in Kindle sales was fueled in part by the success of the iPad. Great for Amazon while it lasted and because it was a benefit to Apple as well they let it ride. Apple appears to no longer believe turning a blind eye is mutually beneficial.


Not every kindle book...just those sold on the device they developed.


Not likely even if it turns out to be a mistake. Apple has a recourse: dropping their 30% down to a percentage that all publishers end up on iBooks. That isn't an outcome that Amazon or B&N wants as it is downward pressure on the highest percentage they can charge.

That's not entirely correct. If you want to use a car analogy, then Apple would own the roads you drove to get to the dealer to buy the car. This would be the platform on which your product can function. And by the way, every purchase made regarding automobiles; gas, tires, cars, etc., usually have a built-in tax that goes towards making sure the roads can be maintained and the environment clean.

Furthermore, Apple would not be massively wounded by the removal of one function that may affect a small portion of their user base. If Amazon were to remove the Kindle app, the user could simply buy a Kindle or start buying books from another book store. No one is mortally wounded here, just inconvenienced. Amazon would just continue as they always have.

On top of that, you don't know the terms of Amazon's reseller license.

Well then, with all that available to them, they don't have to be in the App Store, and so what is this entire debate all about?

You know, I think YOU don-t want to understand. Kindle books weeren't bought through the Apple store, Netflix subs weren't bought thought the App Store. It's not hard to understand if you want to understand.

I'm just not smoking fanboyism, that's all. It's the illusion of choice because one of the choices is hidden. It's there, so Apple can say there's a choice (and fanboys will go on and on about it), but they don't want you to talk about it or even hint at it in the app.

Once a consumer is in the App, there's effectively one choice, and the developers only options are to include in app purchasing for a platform they already have established online payment systems for or don't provide an app at all.

Another untruth! You're really piling them on, and you never even went to the web stores you talked about to see if what you said was true.

Is this all you're going to do here, tell people they're wrong and not provide any useful information? Because it's getting old real fast.

None of these companies have to be in the App Store. If they don't like the terms, they can leave. If they think they can live with them, they won't. Pretty simple.

People don't have to use Apple to get these services.

What is that supposed to mean? The only reason people use the App Store is for those companies products? Seriously?

No, another truth. Are they forced to implement in app purchasing if they want their app approved yes or not?

Ps, have you read the fictionwise epub links?

Welcome back web apps...

Can't Amazon, B&N, and others simply create a fancy HTML 5 web app that does essentially what their iOS developed app store apps does and bypass this new requirement?

Or is Apple going to start what you can buy in a browser too!!

Not very many. You should be asking how many people wouldn't be using those companies if it weren't for the iPad. It would be at least as many.

So now you're assuming that no one would find my online store just because I implemented IAP in my app? That's ridiculous.

All Apple is saying, is that I cannot directly link to my online store or make references to purchasing items outside of my app. It does not say that I cannot provide the user with a link to my website for support issues or ANYTHING else. Once the user is on my website, they could in fact discover my online store. The issue at hand is that I have not lead them there for the sole purpose of making a sale; thereby willfully cutting Apple out of the transaction.

At the heart of the matter is the question of why should Netflix (or any other cross platform service) be forced to surrender 30% of their lifetime subscription revenue from a customer because they initially signed up for the service on their iPhone? If Apple gave Netflix the choice to implement in-app subscriptions or not, they'd be free to implement them if they felt they were beneficial.

I don't agree with you on this one Mel. My iPad 2 purchase will be put on hold if Amazon, B&N, Netflix content goes bye-bye.

You know it's a little weird that no one has pointed out that this is a significant issue for amazon only if the iPad is the primary reading device for Kindle users. If 90% of kindle books readers read 90% of the time on the kindle device my assumption would be 90% of the time they'll buy their next book using the Kindle and not their iPad.

Apple then gets only a minuscule piece of the amazon pie.

On the other hand if the iPad is the primary book reader for a large segment of the kindle users then it's a huge deal. Of course, this means that Amazon really has been freeloading off of Apple's success and 30% seems pretty fair given Amazon hasn't offered Apple anything...not a cut of an app purchase, not a cut of a book sale, not a offer for reciprocal space in the kindle market. Nada. They didn't have to. Then again apple doesn't have to let them on their ecosystem either.

No one in the app would find the store unless they were aware of Apple's billing arrangement and didn't want to give Apple money.

Clicking "buy now" is much easier than searching for a support link.

In the binary sense, yes, there are two options, an in app purchase and an out of app purchase. Overlay that with the requirement to use the in app purchase framework, and the removal of the option to link away to complete a purchase, and then force the content owner to charge the same price or better for using the in app purchase framewor, then you can (or should be able to) quite readily see that the choice is effectively an illusion.

And apple gets their 30%

No, it's not a good analogy. You can only take car analogies so far: perhaps you can speak about warranties. You would expect to see Toyota again in that case. But they'll say, sorry we no fix your car because you converted it to LPG and that violates the warranty.

What makes a "computer" different is that it is more than a sum of the parts. Yes, you own the physical hardware components, whatever you can weigh in your hand. You own the engine and the body.

But guess what, it doesn't matter how much you paid for your iPad, you don't own iOS and most software. You have a license for the use of the software on that iPad. The OS and the iStore platfrom belong to Apple, they are not selling it to you. The iTunes Store is not "on your iPad", you are accessing it from your iPad.

If you want to jailbreak your iPad and "do what you want" with it, then go ahead. But Apple doesn't have to support your breaking of the license agreement. Or, don't buy one.

And no, it's not 39% of every Kindle book. It's 30% of those sold through the in-app purchase mechanism. If Amazon wants those customers, and those customers want simple, one click purchase tied to their one iTunes account, and they don't want Amazon to know their details, then, yes, Apple gets 30%. Otherwise Amazon can sell Kindle books on Kindles. Is Sony going to sell Kindle books for Amazon? Is the Nook going to sell Kindle books for Amazon?

Amazon can leave, by all means. Would I buy a Kindle? No way. So, it will be Amazon that crawls back. They know they'll sell a bunch of books to the 160M iDevice users if they have a Kindle iApp on Apple's terms.

Does Apple receive 30% of the monthly Netflix subscription cost or do they just get the initial subscription cost when you sign up?

I said they don't get a cut from those sales. What more do you expect? But Apple still has to pay for all the work they do in hosting the FREE app, for which they get nothing.

I suspect you think that's fair though.


Sure, because you really don't seem to know anything about any of this. You're unresponsive to certain questions, you don't seem to be familiar with any of the companies we're talking about, and you mention most things only after someone else has brought it up first.

I'm even beginning to wonder if you're an IBM plant, some version of Watson.

As long as it auto-renewed through iTunes, they'd get 30% of every payment.

Apple has always stated they support two platforms, one that is fully open, WebKit and one that is regulated, iOS.

Baloney. because as you say they already have their own websites too where you can sign up for and/or buy their content/services. which web sites you can easily access via browser on the same iOS device that runs their app. and then you stream/download that "purchased outside" content via their app per usual. Apple did not prohibit that. so nobody is being "forced" to do business through Apple only. Apple just said the browser-buy price can't undercut the in-app price.

excluding all that un-affected iOS broswer-based business, for the remaining in-app business, this all boils down to two situations:

- the company is selling/renting/subscribing content that Apple ALSO offers via iTunes, iBooks, etc. so Apple will now get its cut from its competition too.

- the company is selling/renting/subscribing content that Apple does NOT offer via iTunes, iBooks, etc. so Apple will get its cut the same as if those add-on purchases were included in the price of the app itself. games do this a lot of course - a very low app price with lots of in-app paid extras. but the same trick could be used by anyone.

i have no problem with this business model. iOS is Apple's walled garden, and you gotta give Apple a piece of the action if you want to sell your flowers inside it. you can still sell them outside the gate too, keep al the money, and have people carry them inside for free instead.

the business question is whether 30% is more than many are willing to pay. for that charge you do get exposure to the biggest single installed base of digital shoppers (with higher than average incomes), the iOS platform, and you avoid all other transaction costs. so there is value gained in exchange.

all the big guys - Hulu, Amazon, Netflix - sign you up and sell you their stuff via the web first anyway. this will barely affect them now, tho it does discourage them from competiing directly with iTunes via apps in the future. Newspapers and magazines can do the same too. it's the smaller outfits that get most of their exposure via the App Store that depend most on in-app purchases now. well, they've always got Android and all its big spenders (sic). please don't anyone suggest Apple has some kind of monopoly (but the Euro regulators probably will anyway).

the marketplace will prove the ultimate test of this Apple "franchise fee." but as always, 70% of something is a whole lot more than 100% of nothing.

You know very well that 30% is no higher, and often lower than any other way the publisher can get this done for them. If they have to maintain their own site, there is heavy overhead there as well. And if a third party other than Apple doing it, they will charge just as much, or more. But you know that.

And of course Apple has to charge that. Why should subs be any different from any other app? How would other app producers feel if Apple charged less then they paid? That wouldn't be fair.

This way, everyone pays the same, for the same services. Nothing could be more fair than that.

I find it weird that anyone would download the Netflix app before they got a sub.

If Apple thinks it's not fair to host an app for free, they can charge for hosting and bandwith costs, but why is fair to charge for sometimes they aren't providing?



Where do you want i send the iMac, Macbook, iPhone, Mac Mini receipts?

Gizmodo actually offers some pretty good coverage of this, including this bit:

I understand well. I also see, that as usual, you don't respond to a whole post, but just one small part of it, as though the rest will just go away. But it's here forever.

How would you auto-renew through iTunes? Is Apple requiring all in-app purchases to be made via iTunes accounts too?

If they already have to maintain their own site for other platforms, why should they also have to have the in-app purchasing arrangement with Apple?

Only if they have out of app purchasing as well. We're not arguing that. We're arguing the results of what it means.

Because there's a possibility that the customer never would've signed up in the first place if they hadn't done so through the Netflix iOS app. So they would be out of that 70% until the customer stumbled across it some other way.

But the opposite is true, Apple is providing Netflix with a free platform for existing customers to view content. They will NEVER see a single cent from those customers and will continue to host Netflix's app for free as well.

And are you kidding me? Do you really think Netflix would volunteer to implement IAP, if they didn't have to? This is the heart of the problem as it is now. All these companies are making money off Apple's platform and not one is offering Apple anything in return, not even charging for the app, so Apple could make some money from them. Instead they're abusing Apple's policy of not charging for free apps and charging users for content elsewhere.

We'll just have to see what happens. We're arguing this all day, but we really don't know exactly how this will pan out. I don't agree with everything Apple has done here, but for the most part, it does look pretty good for publishers, much better than we thought it would.

With Netflix continually lowering their prices, apparently there's a lot of rubber there. It all comes down to whether these companies think they will do better in the App Store or not. We can't decide that for them.

But no matter what, it's Apple's store, and all stores make their own rules. This is a new convention, selling within an app. Apple is trying to see how this will work out for them. It's not written in stone. Apple has made changes to its rules before, and they will do so again.