Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
And I’m back
I’m ready to give a better answer for that question. It won’t make anyone happy, but it does have the virtue of being true. The answer is that it is technically the same, but commercially different. Another analogy for you:
Two real estate developers each build a shopping mall. Each builds the exact same building, brick by brick. Yet developer B can charge a much higher rent than developer A. How are they different?
Well, developer A built in the rural Midwest. Developer B built in downtown Manhattan. In some Platonic universe, the two shopping malls should have equal rental incomes. That, however, is not the real world.
Like it or (mostly) hate it, Apple has the equivalent of downtown Manhattan real estate. The IOS platform IS different, commercially, from those other platforms. You can make money-lots of money-on the IOS platform. You can’t make the same money on say, the Blackberry platform. RIM has the same kind of control over the Blackberry platform that Apple has over the IOS platform, but its just in a different league commercially. Developers and merchants are flocking to the IOS platform for that reason, and therefore Apple can do what others cannot –charge rent.
We have to look at how the bookstores operated here. Let’s roll back the clock to I day-April 1. On that date, there was only ONE ebook app on the Ipad-Apple’s. All the other booksellers took a wait and see attitude, because most “experts” predicted that the Ipad would be a flop. Go to I plus 60. Despite the “experts “, the Ipad is a runaway success, and the scramble to get on the Ipad begins. Amazon led the way, but by summers end all the major booksellers are on board. Now all of these guys are commercially sophisticated players. They knew that they were dealing with Apple, and I’m sure their lawyers reviewed every comma of every agreement and developer’s guideline. They knew that Apple was allowing them to set up bookstores rent free on the IOS platform. They also knew or should have known that at some point Apple could start charging rent. Well, the day might be here.
Now consumers may be surprised by this, but I guarantee you the booksellers weren’t, or at least shouldn’t have been. They are negotiating with Apple what the rent will be. Again, Apple can command rent, not because of some technical or moral reason. They are doing it because that’s what owners of very successful merchandising platforms do.
Consumers weren’t cheated by Apple, as some have said. Apple never promised that it would allow the booksellers to operate rent free forever on the IOS platform. I would have preferred that Apple had done that, but they didn’t. Again, I believe that both Apple and the booksellers will negotiate a mutually beneficial deal.
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So basically it boils down to: They're entitled to it because they think they can get away with it. They think access to their platform is valuable enough that they should get
baksheesh for transactions in which they take no part.
It's simple economic parasitism.