Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
There is only so much they can do with a new and improved app. Now instead of iBooks it will be called Apple Books? The reading experience from reading a book cannot be improved a whole lot without changing the medium (e.g. add multimedia). One huge advantage Apple has that it 100% controls which apps are able to buy books inside the app (hint: only iBooks or Apple Books, since the others are forced to pay Apple 30% of every purchase). Nobody can compete with agency pricing on Apple devices when you are forced to double dip. Sure you could sell books in an app if you hand over all your profit to Apple.
ETA: Now if Apple miracously manages to overtake Amazon in ebook market share by a huge margin through clever and misguided advertising. Coupled with the giant marketshare in cell phones. Coupled with the non-competition digital sales in the app store. If that is not a case for anti-trust, then I don't know what is. IMPO they are walking on very thin ice.
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And how much does Amazon get paid when you buy books from other vendors on the Kindle platform? Oh, that's right, you can't buy books from other vendors on the Kindle platform. Apple charges _all_ vendors for in app purchases, it's just Amazon wanted a special deal. You can still buy Kindle books on an iPad by using the web browser and then downloading via the kindle app. I've used that method a number of times.
Since Amazon doesn't have a sympathetic justice department to run to anymore, I rather doubt they will get much traction for any anti-trust pushes to run off potential competitors.
As far as competition, if Apple starts pushing ebooks, that's going to be competition. What Apple has done with books is important not from the reading experience, but rather from the purchasing experience, in theory making it easier for the average reader to find books they may be interested in, which goes to what I've been saying for a while, where Amazon is vulnerable is if someone creates an ebook store that has better discoverability. We will see if it's significantly better or not when it comes out in a couple of months.
I doubt that Apple gets a huge jump in market share, but even if they can get it up to 20 to 30 percent, that will be significant competition and hopefully force Amazon to start improving their store.
Personally, I won't buy from Apple until I can remove the DRM from their books, but hey, maybe we will have something similar to the music situation occur. If you will remember, the music industry decided to allow Amazon to sell DRM free music to help them compete with Apple's iTunes store. If the various publishers allow Apple to sell DRM free ebooks, then they might start getting my business, especially if I find their ebook store easier to use.