[Crowl]

Originally Posted by david_e

As for doing nothing for the money, they are providing the platform that will bring NEW customers to these merchants. Without an iPad would a Nook user buy a book from the Kindle store or vice-versa? And what about the people who did not have a dedicated reading device before but now have one that can read anything from anyone? This is a brand new customer base for ebooks and their sellers that Apple has created with the advent of the device and platform.

Apple already got paid for this by these apps helping to sell the hardware to you, this is not a one way street, they are already benefiting from what these companies are offering to owners of ios devices.

I don't think we will see price increases at all. The big sellers are all going to participate because none of them can afford not to participate. Do you see Barnes and Noble walking away and leaving this entire market to Amazon? They can't afford to because they would also be risking the loss of their current customer base. If I've got a Nook and an iPad but can't buy/sync Nook content but I can buy/sync Kindle content what am I going to do?

You are overlooking the obvious point that neither company could afford to stay on the platform because any continued success that resulted from theirs and other apps would actually increase their losses and it is better for them to get out now making the platform less appealing compared with the alternatives where they could still operate profitably.

Once other similar tablet devices launch and the vendors are also selling on these platforms the Apple percentage becomes even less important. The vendors should have increased sales overall even if their profit margin is a bit less. The iPad app simply becomes like that very, very expensive corporate B&M store that may not sell enough to meet expenses but makes up for it in PR.

How does it give them any pr benefit, it is not like an app being on the appstore would do anything for sales on the other platforms and given that it lost them money with each sale drawing attention to it on ios would be a bad thing since it would continue to aid that platform.

While you may feel their methods or motives are unethical, they are in business for one reason, to make money, to make all the money they possibly can, for themselves, for the company, and for their stockholders.

I am fine with them wanting to make as much money as they can and think that it is great for them to offer additional services to the companies that want to use them in order to improve the amount of content on ios devices, but as a consumer and not an employee or shareholder I feel no need to sit back and be happy about a change that could potentially make the product I already own worse than it currently is at the moment and quite frankly I am shocked at how many people seem so eager to stick up for apple over a move that is bad for the consumer.

Beyond the likes of amazon, nook and kobo being forced off ios, there is also the potential negative effect for those that stay e.g. the t3 magazine was a featured item on the appstore recently and one of the things mentioned as a popular in-app purchase was a sub that worked out at £2 an issue while currently it is more like £1.60 an issue from zinio so either the latter will be forced to increase prices or be forced off and neither is good for me as a consumer.