Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Requiring eBook Apps With External Purchases to Also Offer In App Purchasing
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I was refering to apple
. I agree, it's dumb. The way the AppStore works has always made me upset.
Exactly what I was thinking. The Kindle app just manages and syncs your ebooks. You don't purchase ebooks through the app, but through Amazon's website.
So, if Apple is just enforcing their rules, then Amazon must've read and understood those rules pretty well when designing their Kindle app.
Sony, on the other hand, didn't get the memo.
Apple just doesn't know when to stop sometimes.
I would buy a Kindle and send all my book purchases to Amazon directly if Apple was to pull the app or charge the App Store Tax.
I would buy a Kindle and send all my book purchases to Amazon directly if Apple was to pull the app or charge the App Store Tax.
That's nice, but when I spent £699 on an iPad I did so knowing I could buy and read Kindle books on it. If Apple remove that functionality then I will sure as hell take it personally.
If it happens yes I'll sell it, but I'll be pissed and taking a hit simply because as a company they can't be trusted by their customers.
Its not about Apple or Sony or Amazon. Its about the customers who bought an iPad based on functionality which may be removed.
By all means dick about with iPad2 to your heart's content, Apple.
Make it only run on special Apple store electricity, needing special Apple glasses to see the screen. Go wild. At least people will know what the restrictions are when they buy and not 9 months later.
First of all, Sony is nowhere near Amazon in terms of power. Sony is just happy to still be relevant in the ebook arena. Amazon has never broken the rules. Their purchases are not in app, but through Safari. So as long as Amazon follows the guidelines there will be no issues.
The irony here is that many of the folks on this site fully understand how some of this works and the value Apple brings to Kindle and Sony.
1) Amazon takes a 30% cut of books they sell for download to their Kindle. You are saying Apple should not get the same revenue for providing the same service? Maybe Amazon/Sony should take the price cut since Apple is the one providing the Credit Card service and marketing the app through their App store (which is WAAAAYYYY bigger than any of their markets).
2) If there had not been a Kindle App for Ipad, I would NEVER have bought a Kindle book from Amazon as I would never have bought a Kindle reader and don't like to read on my laptop. I have no stats (since Amazon doesn't release them), but I would be shocked if they don't sell almost as many Kindle downloads for Ipad as they sell for their own Kindle Readers.
3) To they guy who asked about Skype credits being bought through the store. Funny example, I wanted to try that out the other day, but I opted not to set up a skype credit card account and so I did not buy any minutes. If it had been an in-app purchase, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. Instead, they got none of my money.
4) To the guy who mentioned giving away games for free and then doing in app purchases - Apple takes 30% of in app purchases as well. That is the whole point. Then I don't have to screw with setting up an account with that manufacturer to buy their .99 doo-dad.
5) Aggregated services like this are the reason I use Amazon/The App Store on other large sites. What would it be like if 50 sites were offering iPhone apps for sale and I had to sign up for each of them to buy some exclusive app I wanted. Sometimes I find stuff a dollar or two cheaper than Amazon on other sites, but I buy from them anyway because I have an account and Amazon prime. Same thing goes for in App purchases.
6) People would buy more products from Kindle and Sony if they were handled through the itunes store and their revenue would go up. It becomes an impulse purchase. I work at a company that sells downloaded software. The #1 barrier to purchase is account set-up.
1) Amazon takes a 30% cut of books they sell for download to their Kindle. You are saying Apple should not get the same revenue for providing the same service? Maybe Amazon/Sony should take the price cut since Apple is the one providing the Credit Card service and marketing the app through their App store (which is WAAAAYYYY bigger than any of their markets).
2) If there had not been a Kindle App for Ipad, I would NEVER have bought a Kindle book from Amazon as I would never have bought a Kindle reader and don't like to read on my laptop. I have no stats (since Amazon doesn't release them), but I would be shocked if they don't sell almost as many Kindle downloads for Ipad as they sell for their own Kindle Readers.
3) To they guy who asked about Skype credits being bought through the store. Funny example, I wanted to try that out the other day, but I opted not to set up a skype credit card account and so I did not buy any minutes. If it had been an in-app purchase, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. Instead, they got none of my money.
4) To the guy who mentioned giving away games for free and then doing in app purchases - Apple takes 30% of in app purchases as well. That is the whole point. Then I don't have to screw with setting up an account with that manufacturer to buy their .99 doo-dad.
5) Aggregated services like this are the reason I use Amazon/The App Store on other large sites. What would it be like if 50 sites were offering iPhone apps for sale and I had to sign up for each of them to buy some exclusive app I wanted. Sometimes I find stuff a dollar or two cheaper than Amazon on other sites, but I buy from them anyway because I have an account and Amazon prime. Same thing goes for in App purchases.
6) People would buy more products from Kindle and Sony if they were handled through the itunes store and their revenue would go up. It becomes an impulse purchase. I work at a company that sells downloaded software. The #1 barrier to purchase is account set-up.
"We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."
I can only assume that this applies to all in app purchases. I'd check with the rules, but you can only see that if you are paying $99 a year for a license. So, with that assumption, if i'm reading that correctly I see 2 things-
1) It's not really an issue for many apps. Add the button and still sell your content outside of the app using a website. This meets their criteria. I don't think you can jack up the price as one commenter mentioned due to the "same option" line. Probably means same price, same items.
2) There are also many apps that will have to stop selling their apps. Any app that uses a pay model, (such as Netflix, Sirus/XM, or the Guardian - basic pay to use the service/product, but using that service on an iOS device is free), have to stop. Apps like this require a contact with the company which in turn gets you the ability to use their free app on the iOS device and all of a sudden a lot of apps that require external paid services or items become "illegal" within the iOS app store. I don't see these companies chancing giving up 30% of there entire business to Apple.
So unless they are singling out just book stores, they need to be careful how they are wording these vague rules. Otherwise they are going to have to force out a lot of apps... or just have a bunch of companies shaking, and hoping they aren't noticed.
While I do think 30% of in app purchases is high (30% of apps is fine with me a dev) realize that even though this content is coming through a 3rd party, Apple provides a easy system for users to restore purchased content such as in a device restore or a new device. This does take some verification on apple's side and as such I could see 10%. That gives them a few % for the credit card fees they get charged, and a few percent profit. The issue I see is that other companies like Amazon or Sony may not have 30% markup to be able to pay to Apple. If the publisher gets 50% of a $4.99 book ($2.50) that leaves only $2.50 for Apple & Amazon/Sony... So what will happen is they will try to set the in App purchase price higher then the normal price. Apple will reject this and then we have a real mess.
It would not be a problem if Apple had never allowed kindle, b&n, stanza, etc onto the App store. But they did. And now it seems they want to change how these apps function in some fundamental ways. It's the sudden about-face that's the problem.
No, because the Kindle has been designed and marketed in a particular way and so customers know what they're getting. Amazon can do whatever they want to do.
The iPad, on the other hand, is sold as a multipurpose device that has a closed app store but also has Safari which takes you to the open web. You know going in that you can only have apps Apple allows, but you can visit any web page you want to.
This is not a case of Apple blocking the web. But it IS a case where people have bought iPads knowing they can access Kindle books through the web. Now they're being told that, no, Amazon does have to deal with the app store. This may affect Amazon's precense on the iOS store.
So IF Amazon ends up pulling out of iOS over this THEN we have a situation where people bought an iPad thinking they could get to their Amazon books over the web, but were then told that's wrong, they can no longer do that.
And that sucks because it's a change from what people originally thought.
And so it doesn't matter what Amazon does with their Kindle, just so long as it keeps doing the things they said it would do, which they have. So your comparision is not really applicable. This is not about abilities. It's about changes and broken promises.
Yes, yes I do.
I think we are getting into a very anti-consumer digital age.
Apple is far from the only guilty party here! They are just the ones being talked about right now =).
If you buy a book, you should be able to do read it on any device.
If you buy a movie, you should be able to play it anywhere (TV, Phone, Computer, XBOX).
Imagine if Computers were *new things* in 2011. I doubt you would be able to install anything without going through a "AppStore"
I love Apple! It is bringing order to the chaotic cyberworld. The action may sound silly, but it is first in its kind. So I applaud it. There are many reasons why Apple gets a lot from it, and not only money, such as forcing amazon&co to report directly Apple on their sales, how much, what, and when. The user friendliness of the in-app purchase system will end up taking a big $hare of Amazon's sales and strategy.
The Kindle is a single-purpose device. iOS devices are not.. and Kindle & B&N apps for those devices predate iBooks by quite a bit.
If I buy a Kindle, it's because I want an eReader. If I buy an iPad, it's because I want to spend 5x as much for the versatility of being able to do whatever I want.. it's still, basically, a computer.
Apple disallowing Kindle due to is offering of iBooks for iPad makes as much sense as disallowing Photoshop on Mac due to the existence of MacPaint.
There is an awfully simple solution for this: Open iOS so that others can start their own app stores for the platform. Problem solved. And I firmly believe that Apple should be forced to do this with a court order.
Agreed, in the end Apple might have to give up some of its simplicity and charge different levels depending on product category. Every reseller/shop already does this today with different margins on different products, even in businesses where the original producer sets the price (eg, newspapers) and subscription medicine (at least in a number of European countries subscription medicine has to be sold at the same price everywhere).
Ein? Apple doesn't provide the Credit Card Service, doesn't store the books, doesn't sell them and doesn't deliver them
Yes they do.
The real issue here, of course, is going to be the pricing. If all is required is an in app purchasing mechanism, with no requirement that the price be the same as what's offered outside the app, this will be inconvenient, but won't otherwise be a big deal. If Apple prohibits price discrimination, however, Amazon and B&N will probably pull their apps, and the iPad will suffer a small, but real, loss of customers. I'm skeptical that this will really help the sales of iBooks, which seem to be about as popular as ATRAC.
Yes correct. If you don't want Apple to get the 30% cut then buy your book through the web store and just use the Kindle to read it as normal.
It's not really a comparison. More of an observation.
Sony has it's Sony-only reader products. With no external content allowed.
Sony has its PSN gaming network, which does allow third party content, but takes a massive royalty share. (much more than 30%)
Microsoft do the same.
And Amazon has yet another closed device model.
Apple's platform is a hybrid. open web app appliance, and a curated app store with revenue sharing. It's interesting that the totally closed models generate less anger than the hybrid model.
C
I can see both sides to this argument.
If Apple caves, then what happens when developers turn their iOS apps into freeware, but make all the interesting content available exclusively through separate purchase, such as through a website? This would pretty much kill off the iOS application revenue stream for Apple (aka the 30%).
The Kindle hardware is arguably more closed than iOS. Apart from free content, there is no option to use the Kindle hardware to read ebooks from other marketplaces - B&N, Sony or even Apple's iBooks.
But taken to the logical conclusion, will it be impossible for an iOS app to access any other paid content from another system? What if you have a service that involves a subscription (ex: Netflix). Why should iOS make it impossible to use that external subscription, just because Apple didn't get a share of the revenue?
The issue with these stories is it makes the iOS platform a high-risk platform: there is a risk that Apple can change the rules of the platform, kicking out your application, and making your effort worthless.
If Apple caves, then what happens when developers turn their iOS apps into freeware, but make all the interesting content available exclusively through separate purchase, such as through a website? This would pretty much kill off the iOS application revenue stream for Apple (aka the 30%).
The Kindle hardware is arguably more closed than iOS. Apart from free content, there is no option to use the Kindle hardware to read ebooks from other marketplaces - B&N, Sony or even Apple's iBooks.
But taken to the logical conclusion, will it be impossible for an iOS app to access any other paid content from another system? What if you have a service that involves a subscription (ex: Netflix). Why should iOS make it impossible to use that external subscription, just because Apple didn't get a share of the revenue?
The issue with these stories is it makes the iOS platform a high-risk platform: there is a risk that Apple can change the rules of the platform, kicking out your application, and making your effort worthless.