Neither is Amazon's job to make Apple's IAP service successful. If you have to force your service down the throat of third parties maybe your service is not that great or your pricing is not that interesting.
What are you talking about? Amazon can't do it because their business model does not allow for it. For real content producers the 30% is a steal. It is a great bargain. Look at the success of the App store if you do not believe me.
I have a lot of business experience, and I know how much it costs to market products from beginning to end. I also know how most of the cross-commission and affiliate programs work on the internet and how Amazon does most of their business.
Amazon will be back at some point. They can not afford not to be.
The other option is to actually allow true competition in iOS, which would improve many things IAP included.
What are you talking about again?
Currently Apple's IAP is competing against not having the service at all, and it's actually still failing...
Failing at what? Amazon is the one who is losing business not Apple. In fact Apple is probably making more as people just go buy the same products on iBooks. Hundreds of millions of people have iOS devices and millions of people have Kindles.
if there were competing services allowed Apple's IAP would need to have a far lower pricing to make sense. That would mean developers could choose the service offering they find more interesting (or implement their own) and end-users could potentially get lower prices.
That doesn't make sense in the context of the Apple ecosystem. If you want a horrible mishmash of multiple vendor app stores, go buy an android device. If you want a professionally run and managed app store for your mobile device where they actually try to vet software and create the best user experience, then get an iOS device. I don't want the crappy experience Android presents. Either do most people who have iOS devices. That is where some of you go astray.
I don't want another App Store so developers can make 5 more cents on the dollar. The current system works great for developers and consumers. It works way better than the Android model does, for everyone involved. Developers, Consumers and Apple make out better than the related parties in the Android dynamic.
Despite companies in general (and Apple here in particular) don't like it, competition usually is a good thing in business. You might learn about that in business 101.
There is competition. For people who want a crappy ecosystem they can buy an android device. Why should Apple allow second-tier app stores into the iOS environment? How would that benefit me as the consumer? Would I be able to put porn on my phone? Oh boy.
You are taking a model that is miles more successful than anything comparable and saying it needs competition to be better. Yet the greatly inferior models that do allow competition are just that, greatly inferior.
Plus you may want to sign up for remedial business school. No business wants competition. They deal with it, they manage it. If you tell them it does not have to be there, nobody is going to complain. Where did you learn about business?
If you're suggesting that Amazon doesn't host and deliver the books then you're wrong. Amazon is not only a payment processor.
Amazon has tens of thousands of resellers who sell products that Amazon does nothing but process the payment and forward the order.
Also on the e-books they just let people download a file. How is that different than someone downloading the Kindle App from the App store. It is the exact same thing.
The core issue is that Apple allows no choice: either you are in iOS under their rule or you are out. iTunes in Windows has the chance to be installed from third party sources and basically it can do whatever it wants, which cannot happen in iOS unless you jailbreak.
Apple has the right to do so, it's their platform, but the end result is that competition and choice in iOS suffers. Currently iOS users have an inferior experience in the apps affected by this rule and most likely users of apps which embraced IAP have higher prices overall due to the costs of Apple's cut.
Yes the thousands of developers who have built entire businesses on the back of the Apple App Store and the hundreds of millions of iOS users all feel so very cheated by the iOS APP Store ecossystem.
The closed ecosystem is part of the benefit of iOS for the majority of people. It is simple and it can be relied upon.
The automated payment process is hardly a big cost of the app store and would easily be covered by a 5% cut.
Maintaining the SDK, the approval process (which Apple chose to impose themselves), hosting and delivery of APPS (not IAP or IAS) is an expense for the app store, and this is covered by the developers fee and the 30% cut of the price of the app. I have no problem with Apple getting 30% from app purchases.
Just so you know, I'm ignoring all your lame attempts at belittling the rest of us, ofcourse you THINK you know better than us, doesn't make it so. Stop the self-deception.
Like I said you should open up your own app store. Go do it for Android if all your costs are simply the processing fees. With the volumes I am sure you could generate you would be under 1.5% and you could charge like 10% for your services and you will be filthy rich.
You don't need any employees to design and maintain the app store itself or market the store or related products. You do not need any servers or back ups or network costs to provide access to those servers and to keep them up. You don't need to market or advertise your business in any way shape or form. You don't need any database engineers to manage anything. You don't need anyone to deal with charge backs, stolen credit cards, or billing errors. You do not need anyone to handle customer support when people have problems getting the card to charge or when they have a problem actually downloading the app and getting it to work. You do not need people to actually develop IOS and the SDK that allows the developer applications to work. You do not need to continually update and patch that framework so new applications can be developed. You do not need any staff to review the thousands of application submissions you get on a daily basis to make sure they meet your rules and guidelines and are not going to damage your customers devices. You don't need someone to actually make those rules and guidelines. You do not need any support or administrative staff for all the previous people you obviously do not need. You do not need to pay them benefits either, and you certainly do not need to give them a place to work. Finally you don't need to worry about the millions of "Free" apps that are downloaded that generate zero revenue and still do not require all the above mentioned support staff and services and functions to actually exist.
So all being said, yep, you got it right.. It costs Apple virtually nothing. Should be a breeze for you. By that in that short paragraph above, I probably left of 50 more relevant expenses that would need to be included when doing an actual analysis of the related costs for the App Store.
But your $99 developer fee, credit card processing charge and a bit of SDK development almost cover it.
