You're not looking at the whole picture, however. Think of Amazon as that bookstore. If it wants to continue to stay on the Apple app store, they have to allow Apple to take 30% of the cost of the book, which eats into whatever revenue is generated for Amazon's ebooks. Think about it... either Amazon gives a 30% cut from their existing sales to Apple, or else they don't have a reader on iOS anymore.
Apple is saying "give us a cut of whatever your business is, or you don't do business." Its one thing for Apple to take 30% from the publisher directly (that's what iBooks is for). Its another thing to take 30% from literally *anyone* who wants to do business on iOS, regardless of existing agreements.
It appears that all the existing agreements call for a 30% share for Apple. Some resellers have been getting around this by providing a free app and then charging for content. Apple saw through that ruse and has asked that they pay their share just as others do with in-app purchases.
Mind you that I think Apple is asking too much for another reseller like Amazon where Apple only provides the payment processing and a minimum of "merchandising". And I think this will eventually be worked out between those parties.
However, in all the furor, can you even imagine Amazon (who has built a business on partnerships) even allowing a competing bookseller into the Kindle store. If they did, do you honestly think they would not ask for some cut?
Here's a thought. If Apple wanted to grow leaps and bounds by more than it has I should vertically intergate. By means of buying a company ie amazon. That way they get a full 100 percent of the profiy and not 30 They would be able to continually squeeze out other sellers if books and magazines with their 30 percent. Apple then would be a total Media company. In addition they would have the patent for kindle and it's unique texts style. If that text style could be integrated on the iPad and iPhone that would be aweseome. Just forward thinking here. As for as the European publishers I say deal with a free open economic society and the U.S. doesn't do business like you chaps over there. You want to play then these EU chaps should have to pay.
"If you take this kind of thinking to the next step, then software developers should have to pay Apple 30% of the cost of a software application that runs on a Mac in order to have the "privilege" of using OS X to run their software. This is insane. There should be a symbiotic relationship between Apple and software developers/magazine-newspapers. Yes, Apple does provide a platform for magazines and newspapers to make content available to it's customers. But at the same time, the presence of that content makes the iPad a much more attractive device which benefits Apple. One of the reasons some cellphone OS's such as Blackberry are losing customers is that their application market is pathetic. Apple has over a quarter of a million apps available for iOS. That benefits Apple as much as it benefits the developers. Do TV studios have to pay TV manufacturers for the 'privilege' of providing content on their TV's? Of course not! "
Comments
You're not looking at the whole picture, however. Think of Amazon as that bookstore. If it wants to continue to stay on the Apple app store, they have to allow Apple to take 30% of the cost of the book, which eats into whatever revenue is generated for Amazon's ebooks. Think about it... either Amazon gives a 30% cut from their existing sales to Apple, or else they don't have a reader on iOS anymore.
Apple is saying "give us a cut of whatever your business is, or you don't do business." Its one thing for Apple to take 30% from the publisher directly (that's what iBooks is for). Its another thing to take 30% from literally *anyone* who wants to do business on iOS, regardless of existing agreements.
It appears that all the existing agreements call for a 30% share for Apple. Some resellers have been getting around this by providing a free app and then charging for content. Apple saw through that ruse and has asked that they pay their share just as others do with in-app purchases.
Mind you that I think Apple is asking too much for another reseller like Amazon where Apple only provides the payment processing and a minimum of "merchandising". And I think this will eventually be worked out between those parties.
However, in all the furor, can you even imagine Amazon (who has built a business on partnerships) even allowing a competing bookseller into the Kindle store. If they did, do you honestly think they would not ask for some cut?
[sic] canonshooter.