Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
Which is an entirely defensive move. It prevented Amazon et al from forcing Apple to compete on price. Apple wanted to offer a bookstore and have it be competitive, without risking having to run it at a loss under attack from the other booksellers. It wanted to have its own book platform, so that it wasn't entirely hostage to Amazon and the others, but it didn't want to have to spend much effort on it.
How much revenue do you think the iBookstore has ever made for Apple? It is irrelevant in the context of Apple revenue, or even iTunes revenue, and the whole of the iTunes store only runs at about breakeven.
The point of forcing subscriptions through in-app purchases will come with the newsstand app, with all the different magazines and newspapers presented through a single front-end application controlled by Apple. It makes the process easier for users and so improves the perceived value of the iOS platform, and will help to drive hardware sales, which is what Apple actually cares about.
Amazon make money selling content, Apple makes money selling hardware.
(Apples Q3 2011 revenue was $28.57 Billion, of which iTunes made up only $1.1 Billion, that is less than 4%.)
[I just said 'only' and '$1.1 Billion' in the same sentence, that just seems wrong!]
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Defensive my ass. They thought they had the new iPod and it wasn't. Defensive would have been if they
already had a store and wanted to be able to compete.
Last I checked, when you fire the first shot in a war that you have no stake in - it's offense not defense.