Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
So the shopping was done within the app, which would mean that it would be subject to the 30%. At least that was my reasoning.
And I said a couple of months because I remembered that the deadline for the removal of the purchase option was in June, but I see now that it was the end of June, so this situation has been going on for just a month.
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Yeah, they need to use Apple's APIs for them to actually get that cut. Since Kobo wasn't, they weren't. Really the policy was saying "Use the APIs, or else", since that 30% did apply since in-app purchases debuted. It just wasn't mandatory to use them if you were selling things in the app.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
Except for the fact that when you say a cut, it makes Apple seem like a victim because the book retailers have cleverly avoided paying their dues, while if you say that it's asking for the whole revenue, it makes Apple seem like a feudal lord that overtaxes his vassals.
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But that's just it, both views are true, and thus the truth is somewhere in the middle. The app store loses a bit of money for every free app downloaded, like the Kobo app. That same app happens to monetize itself within the app. That is offloading some of the cost of doing business to Apple without compensating them.
But it's also true that Apple's cut happens to also be Kobo's cut and makes it unprofitable to go that route. If I want to be pedantic, I can say that "whole revenue" is an exaggeration in and of itself. It's only 30% of Kobo's revenue through the app,
but the rub is that Kobo already promised 70% to the publisher.
Hell, in this situation I'd do exactly what the other retailers have been doing: pulling their in-app store links/etc, and telling their customers to buy directly, using the app as a way to consume the content once purchased. It's the right way to reach those customers on the platform while making a stand and saying Apple's rules stink. Either way, Apple is still taking a loss on these apps because they are hosting them, and they still aren't getting compensated in any way.
The HTML5 approach is interesting to me, more from the aspect that it means being able to browse and grab samples from a browser, do a bit of reading randomly on a device I don't own and so on. The portability of the solution is interesting, and it'll be interesting to see if it works.