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Apple Debuts App Store Subscriptions

manu chao said:
You can end up in a monopoly position without a fault of your own. Once you are there, you are no longer free in your business decisions. Simple as that.
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Sure. But it's not clearly a monopoly position. People CAN buy apps, music, books, etc. on other platforms at prices better than what Apple charges. But, they avoid doing so in massive hordes.


lilo777 said:
Option #1

I can go with iOS and pay 30% fee to Apple. At the same time I can still sell the same content elsewhere but at the price inflated by Apple fee.

Option #2

I can go with Internet, Android, PalmOS, RIM and WP7 platforms and pay no fee whatsoever.

Considering that the market share of iOS devices among all mobile devices is small and shrinking, the choice is quite obvious.

I am afraid that this new subscription is DOA. It will be only good for such content providers like "iOS Magazine".
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You're looking at the wrong marketshare. You need to look at who has the biggest percentage of people actually willing to BUY stuff. Android owners, RIM, blackberry, etc. don't actually pay for content.
 
mdelvecchio said:
can you imagine a SHOPPING MALL charging merchants rent when all they did was design the building, build the building, wire the building, advertise for the building, and process payments in the building?

its rent, folks. the iphone ecosystem wasnt built with unicorn farts.
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By the way some lease agreements do have rates that are based on actual revenue taken in by the business leasing the space...
 
cmaier said:
Again, how is my personal feeling about such a hypothetical relevant? I've meticulously avoided offering a normative opinion on Apple's behavior, why should I render an opinion about a hypothetical situation?
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The question is whether you find it not worth commenting (voicing your opinion) when a company abuses its monopoly position? (Which the ISP/Netflix situation would be.)
 
manu chao said:
The question is whether you find it not worth commenting (voicing your opinion) when a company abuses its monopoly position? (Which the ISP/Netflix situation would be.)
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I don't think my ISP is a monopoly. I assume in your hypothetical that if the ISP takes such an action it somehow effects me? (because it's not clear how it would). I assume you propose that netflix would charge me more to use that ISP? If so, wouldn't I just switch to another ISP?
 
cmaier said:
Sure. But it's not clearly a monopoly position. People CAN buy apps, music, books, etc. on other platforms at prices better than what Apple charges. But, they avoid doing so in massive hordes.
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You just said that almost all app developers and content providers have no choice but to work with Apple. From their point of view, it is a monopoly position.

You might primarily be a consumer but monopolies are not limited to consumer choice. If you are providing services to business and government you can also be in a monopoly. It all depends on where you draw the boundaries for your market.
 
MadGoat said:
Data centers aren't free, nor is the bandwidth. several million copies of the 40+MB "Daily" app sent to Americans isn't free for Apple.
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Let's do the math here.

Let's say there are 10 million copies of The Daily sold. 10 million*40 megs=381.47 TB of data.

Amazon EC2 charges $.08 per gigabyte after the first 150TB, so let's use that as our price per GB (I'm sure Apple gets it much cheaper.

$.08 per GB=$80 per TB
381.47 TB costs $30,517.60 to transfer.

Now let's say only one million (10%) of those users subscribe, and only for a single week! Apple gets $.30 of each subscription, meaning they get $300,000. Remember, that's assuming only 10% of users subscribe, and only for the first week.
 
cmaier said:
I don't think my ISP is a monopoly. I assume in your hypothetical that if the ISP takes such an action it somehow effects me? (because it's not clear how it would). I assume you propose that netflix would charge me more to use that ISP? If so, wouldn't I just switch to another ISP?
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If your ISP is not monopoly, good for you. For a lot of people there is only one fast ISP, like cable companies in the US. I live in Europe but I also only have the cable company as a fast internet provider as an option. In my part of town, nobody else is offering a fast connection.
 
LagunaSol said:
The argument is based on the assumption that Apple doesn't have special agreements in place with larger vendors, like Amazon and Netflix. Do we know for certain that Apple wants a full 30% from Amazon for every Kindle book sold through the Kindle app? I don't believe we do.
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All you have to do is take the 30 seconds to find and read the actual Apple press release and you will find the assumption to be true.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/02/15appstore.html

We can all look forward to higher pricing by any content provider that sells outside the app store and stays in the app store.
 
manu chao said:
You just said that almost all app developers and content providers have no choice but to work with Apple. From their point of view, it is a monopoly position.

You might primarily be a consumer but monopolies are not limited to consumer choice. If you are providing services to business and government you can also be in a monopoly. It all depends on where you draw the boundaries for your market.
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True, but so what? I conceded Apple may have some sort of monopoly power here, but suggested they may not. Antitrust law is an extremely complicated field, and we're not going to reach an authoritative answer on a discussion board.

manu chao said:
If your ISP is not monopoly, good for you. For a lot of people there is only one fast ISP, like cable companies in the US. I live in Europe but I also only have the cable company as a fast internet provider as an option. In my part of town, nobody else is offering a fast connection.
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Which is why I again repeat my objection to your hypothetical. What's it have to do with anything? Now you want me to comment on how I would feel if I happened to live in a place with one ISP, and if Netflix charged me more to use its service because that ISP charged netflix to use the pipes? Who cares what I think about that? I don't even care what I think about it, so I'm guessing no one else does.
 
cmaier said:
Now you want me to comment on how I would feel if I happened to live in a place with one ISP, and if Netflix charged me more to use its service because that ISP charged netflix to use the pipes? Who cares what I think about that? I don't even care what I think about it, so I'm guessing no one else does.
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It would make it easier for you to relate to the question how are feeling as an iOS user with monopoly pricing power by Apple likely to increase product and service prices in iOS apps.
 
lilo777 said:
Option #1

I can go with iOS and pay 30% fee to Apple. At the same time I can still sell the same content elsewhere but at the price inflated by Apple fee.

Option #2

I can go with Internet, Android, PalmOS, RIM and WP7 platforms and pay no fee whatsoever.

Considering that the market share of iOS devices among all mobile devices is small and shrinking, the choice is quite obvious.

I am afraid that this new subscription is DOA. It will be only good for such content providers like "iOS Magazine".
Click to expand...

You really think 100+ million is small...this is the best post all day....
 
Wanna buy an iPad?

Since the news about these subscription fees started to surface last month, I've been investigating other tablets with a change in mind. I love my iPad...I was in line for it on Day One and I think it's the best new tech product since I bought my first computer in the 90's.

But...this 30% policy could cause PressDisplay to lose its app and then I couldn't read newspapers I subscribe to through them, and they have been talking about that possibility in their company blog. What if Zinio goes away, and Kindle, and maybe Netflix too?

Most of you have been talking about the cost to publishers. This will have a serious impact on consumers, either with rising costs or disappearing services. If these apps go, my iPad goes on eBay.
 
manu chao said:
It would make it easier for you to relate to the question how are feeling as an iOS user with monopoly pricing power by Apple likely to increase product and service prices in iOS apps.
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But, once more, why do you think I need help relating to the question? (Though from a legal standpoint I still find your monopoly argument unconvincing). I've never stated that I'm on Apple's side.
 
spazzcat said:
You really think 100+ million is small...this is the best post all day....
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Android has a 43% share of all devices sold in the last 6 months in the US. Apple has 20%.

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/02/01/nielsen-smartphone-marketshare/

For content providers to sell on iOS, it means they have to raise prices on *all* customers. (Apple won't allow you to simply charge more to iOS users to cover their cut) An increase like this would be really bad for business, it makes more sense to simply drop iOS. Sure, they'll lose money doing so. But Apple's new rules mean they would lose a LOT more by sticking with it.
 
cmaier said:
You're looking at the wrong marketshare. You need to look at who has the biggest percentage of people actually willing to BUY stuff. Android owners, RIM, blackberry, etc. don't actually pay for content.
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I am not sure we have the data to confirm (or reject) this assumption. So far, I am not aware of any successful subscription based services on either of these platforms. Netflix is probably one of the few good examples but it is platform agnostic (so if we were to use this example it would work against this assumption). The fact that iDevice users pay more for apps does not automatically mean that this is true for subscriptions.

The most representative example of subscription based content for iPad is probably WIRED Magazine. Here is a quote from CNN: "Wired, Conde Nast's popular technology magazine, made headlines in June when it sold more than 100,000 single-copy iPad issues. But by December, Wired's iPad issue sales had fallen to just 24,000."

I suspect that by January the number dropped below 10,000.
 
mlaurence said:
Since the news about these subscription fees started to surface last month, I've been investigating other tablets with a change in mind. I love my iPad...I was in line for it on Day One and I think it's the best new tech product since I bought my first computer in the 90's.

But...this 30% policy could cause PressDisplay to lose its app and then I couldn't read newspapers I subscribe to through them, and they have been talking about that possibility in their company blog. What if Zinio goes away, and Kindle, and maybe Netflix too?

Most of you have been talking about the cost to publishers. This will have a serious impact on consumers, either with rising costs or disappearing services. If these apps go, my iPad goes on eBay.
Click to expand...

+1

If Apple enforces this outrageous policy, content providers that distribute content outside of the app store will ultimately only have two choices - raise their prices for everyone or abandon the iOS market. Either way, I'll be heading to a new platform as soon as my Kindle or Zinio (or any other) apps or their content are impacted.
 
manu chao said:
And what if you are in a business where the margins are less than 30% at the moment?
You have two options, either raise prices and thus transfer money from your customer's pockets into Apple's pockets or get out of this loss-making business.
Of course we all think this will all just get Apple a cut of the profits other companies make but at all likelihood this means higher prices for consumers for some products.
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People who think the Apple 30% is just all new expense coming right out of margins simply do not understand how businesses work.

It is not like that at all.
 
Vizin said:
Android has a 43% share of all devices sold in the last 6 months in the US. Apple has 20%.

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/02/01/nielsen-smartphone-marketshare/

For content providers to sell on iOS, it means they have to raise prices on *all* customers. (Apple won't allow you to simply charge more to iOS users to cover their cut) An increase like this would be really bad for business, it makes more sense to simply drop iOS. Sure, they'll lose money doing so. But Apple's new rules mean they would lose a LOT more by sticking with it.
Click to expand...

Apple was on one carrier in the US until a few days ago
and only one phone can use iOS
how many phones can use android?

Android should have an even larger gap in marketshare
that just makes them look bad
 
Can someone clarify.

I guess I'm right in assuming this has no effect on apps that you use to purchase real good with?
Such as an app that's a catalogue and you order real items via the app and pay for them with your credit card.
 
marksman said:
That period of time never existed and never was close to existing.
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We can quibble about the ownership statistics in the late 1980's, but that misses the point. Apple had the first mover advantage with the Mac, the first truly consumer-grade personal computer. They squandered that advantage with their abhorrence of an open platform, and were wiped out in the market by the more open Wintel platform. They once again have the first mover advantage in the tablet space, but could once again lose the advantage if they push a significant segment of their content providers to other more open platforms. And it doesn't help that the Android Honeycomb OS is on the verge of hitting the market (in fact, I think Apple might be doing this right now to get this in effect before Honeycomb actually hits the market and becomes an actual rather than a theoretical alternative). If loads of content suddenly leaves iOS, and is only available on the Android OS, the Android OS could end up swamping iOS.

I love my iPad, but I will be getting a Xoom instead of an iPad2 if Kindle, Netflix, etc. apps are pulled from iOS.
 
Piggie said:
Can someone clarify.

I guess I'm right in assuming this has no effect on apps that you use to purchase real good with?
Such as an app that's a catalogue and you order real items via the app and pay for them with your credit card.
Click to expand...

Except how do you get to said site since you can no longer have a link within the app.
 
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