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It's not about customers, who don't necessarily care to whom they pay $9/month, NetFlix or Apple. It's about platform vendors who are being strong-armed into p
by lukifer 16y ago
It's not about customers, who don't necessarily care to whom they pay $9/month, NetFlix or Apple.
It's about platform vendors who are being strong-armed into providing a huge chunk of their revenue to a company who is doing relatively little to earn it, proportional to the amounts involved.
Apple is no better or worse than any other corporation for pursuing this policy. They have the installed userbase to call the shots, and they know it, and they'd be foolish to not take advantage of it.
But they're also putting publishers in a tough spot, especially when they're already struggling with a new business model and a market of unknown size. Apple does run the risk of killing the golden goose, or alienating publishers to the point where they pull their wares from iOS entirely, which is bad for both users and the platform.
In short: of course Apple can do this. It doesn't mean they should.
- ghshephard 16y agoOne of the best comments so far on this whole strategy of Apple, bears repeating: "Apple does run the risk of killing the golden goose, or alienating publishers to the point where they pull their wares from iOS entirely, which is bad for both users and the platform."
- Synaesthesia 16y agoI'm sure I'll get downvoted for this again but - Apple are the only player who have bothered to implement a subscription model. No competition! Once Android do it (and the others) and they become popular enough to compete, Apple may feel the pressure and drop the 30% rate. 30% sounds like a lot but if I would take it if I were a publisher - there's still room to make much more profit than a print operation - no need for presses, ink, paper etc. I mean the 70% you get is pure profit basically.
- Kylekramer 16y agoExcept they aren't the only player. Netflix, Amazon, NYT, the list goes on and on. Any major subscription service has a way to get users to subscribe via the web today. And Apple didn't just introduce a subscription model today, they introduced a subscription model that directly attacks any other model if they want to be on iOS.
- juiceandjuice 16y agoThis isn't a subscription model. It's a middleman model.
- runevault 16y agoIf you ignore the fact many of those content providers are themselves middlemen. Amazon just resells the content of others, and any ebook is 30% for anything under 2.99 and over 9.99, but everything between those price points amazon's cut is only 30%, so with said model they literally can NOT agree to these changes.
- highfreq 16y agoI agree. If Apple sticks to a strict interpretation of this policy, Amazon Kindle and Netflix are gone from iOS. In both cases Apple is only one piece of a much bigger distribution strategy, and a piece they can't afford on these terms. Perhaps, Apple will allow Kindle and Netflix to offer iOS only subscriptions. These subscriptions will not allow the media to be viewed on other platforms, and will not be attractive for most subscribers. The standard subscriptions would still be usable on iOS, but couldn't be purchased in iTunes. Perhaps the iOS subscription could be slightly less expensive, to appease Apple. Apple may be willing to let something like this slide to keep these very popular apps, while keeping what could be a very lucrative policy for other subscription services. I'm sure there are many media startups who are going to jump on this. They'll just price in the 30% and be happy.