Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham
Reading and rereading the press release and subsequent comments, I now think that at the moment Kali Yuga may well be right, and that this refers only to subscription offerings.
The mention of content in the press release is in relation to blocking web links in the application, and can be read as "if Amazon offers magazine subscriptions through their Kindle app on iOS then they must use the iOS in-App purchase method and remove links to their external site that offers content and subscription purchase".
Without further clarification from Apple, it does leave the door open for the Kindle app to work the way it does now as long as it doesn't offer magazine subscriptions (the Android app does offer them).
The fact that the Sony Reader app was pulled may have no bearing on this, as the suggestion was that it tried to offer an alternate in-App purchase method, not an external website-based one.
Graham
|
I suppose that's possible - there's enough ambiguity surrounding what Apple means in relation to ebooks that the bottom line might be that Apple intends to enforce the 30% rule except when it doesn't.
But the trajectory I see is "if you make money off your app, we make money off your app." So my bet is that by summer, either the Kindle App will be off the platform, or Amazon will be paying some kind of tariff for books sold from the Kindle app.
I expect that Amazon will do the math before deciding what to do. One possibility is that they might decide that not all ebooks sold by Amazon will be readable on the Kindle App. Maybe it will depend on the deal with the publisher - Amazon could simply pass the tariff on to any publisher that wants to shoulder it. Those books would be sold on on the Kindle App, but also be the only books readable on the Kindle App.
And I also have to wonder whether Amazon will care if the Kindle App goes south. At this point, do they need to be on the iPad?
And finally, I still wonder if Steve gives a damn about whether the iPad is used for ebook reading. In Steve's universe, ebooks are a drop in the bucket. I doubt that there are very many iPads that would go unsold should the Kindle App disappear.
Certainly it would not have influenced my own buying decision. The iPad is the worst of all ebook readers, IMHO. Too heavy, and not portable in any eBook reading sense. So I really wonder how many people rely on on the iPad as their primary EBR. (I don't even list it as one of my Devices over there on the sidebar...)
Dang. I think I've just talked myself into thinking that Apple knows exactly what it's doing here.