

Amazon removes link to Kindle store from iOS app - quux
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kindle/id302584613?mt=8

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Aloisius
I'm waiting for Apple to require all things bought through Macs to use Apple's
payment system. I mean right now, millions of dollars of products are being
purchased on websites being viewed on Macs. Clearly Apple should get 30%.

I'm sure it'll be huge.

(and screw Karma with this one... Apple appears just greedy and downright
anti-competitive doing this)

~~~
Perceval
Please don't include passive grubbing for upvotes as a coda to your comments.
If you have something to say, even if it's controversial, have the courage to
say it plainly without projecting anxiety about karma (of all things).

It's insulting by implication to the community here that expressing a contrary
but constructive and well-written opinion would become a crisis for your
karma. For the most part, other readers can differentiate between constructive
comments they disagree with and spammers, griefers, trolls, crapflooders, and
trivial one-liners.

~~~
martythemaniak
A contrary but constructive and well-written opinion isn't a crisis for your
karma. But you better get ready to spend some of it if you bad mouth Apple...

~~~
leviathant
I think you just have to be more careful with your rhetoric if you're going to
point out something negative that Apple has done. Most of my karma actually
comes from comments that could be taken as anti-Apple.

If all karma were so hard-earned, the system would probably function closer to
the intentions of those who created it.

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smackfu
The sad thing is that Apple is the kind of company that is deciding to be
evil, rather than just doing it accidentally. I'm sure they calculated that
they would make more money by enforcing these harmful rules than the good will
they would lose, so they did it anyway.

~~~
paperpunk
I don't really think so. Whether they're right or not, the people making these
decisions at Apple aren't doing them to make more money (or at least, not just
that), but because they believe it's better for users.

In this particular case, that to encourage people as far as possible to use
the in-app purchases system is more favourable to the users.

It seems much more likely than "deciding to be evil".

~~~
fpgeek
Breaking the user experience for competitive apps and not even allowing them
to explain why goes far beyond encouraging people to use in-app purchase.

For that matter, using in-app purchase is only favorable to users who stay
entirely within the Apple ecosystem. One serious objection Amazon et al had to
in-app purchase is that it (by design for privacy reasons, IIRC) didn't allow
them to connect the dots between an iTunes account and an Amazon account, so
they wouldn't have been able to give you access to your iOS-purchased ebooks
on non-Apple devices. For that matter, they wouldn't have been able to give
you access to your ebooks on a Mac for the same reason, which is particularly
hilarious because Apple doesn't provide iBooks for Mac either (IIRC, you can
buy but not read on the desktop).

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Hyena
Just to play devil's advocate: Apple pays for the infrastructure to host and
distribute the Kindle app, which then proceeds to circumvent the payment
system by offering the app for free and charging for the content from outside
the Apple store.

While this set up is clever and 30% is a bit of a margin on in-app purchases,
it's not as if Amazon has the moral high ground here. It's providing a paid
service through Apple in a way that allows Amazon to collect on it but not
Apple. That's all that's happening here.

~~~
matwood
Amazon pays Apple $100/year to host the Kindle app, and only the app. All of
the books that someone may buy sit on Amazons servers that they host and
distribute. Amazon also manages its own payment infrastructure and everything
else that deals with getting a book into the Kindle app. Both companies
benefit from having the Kindle app in the app store. Apple gets to brag about
how many apps are for sale for iOS devices (thus sell more devices), and
Amazon gets to sell books.

We could always look at it from Amazons POV. They are providing the content
that makes iOS devices more desirable for consumers. Why isn't Apple giving
them a cut of each device sold?

~~~
Hyena
It will get hard for me to keep playing this game because, as I suggested, I
disagree with Apple here. However, it's a fun exercise.

Say that you go to a grocery store and reach an agreement: you'll be selling
apples, you'll pay $100 in rent plus a 30% cut. When you actually begin
working, you don't "sell" any apples there at all: you just show people how to
order apples for delivery and giving them an apple bin for the truck to unload
into.

If the grocer argues that you're violating the spirit of the agreement, is he
wrong? Would he be wrong to say that he'd been misled?

~~~
sprovoost
This is the heart of the problem: if I open a grocery, I pay the landlord a
fixed rent, not a cut in my sales. That's because rent is generally seen as a
commodity. Apple doesn't want to accept that their App Store infrastructure is
a commodity (it's not cool to be a commodity), so they come up with this
revenue sharing system. They see themselves as a publisher.

That's nice if you're a small developer, because the alternative is paying a
high fixed fee. So what would that fee be? There's 50.000 iOs developers [0]
and the app store generates about a billion in revenue (off the top of my
hat). That means we're paying Apple about $300 million. That means the fixed
price should be $6.000 per year for Apple to earn the same amount (there's
probably no sustainable fixed-price point).

Obviously, if they did that, Android would become infinitely more attractive,
since they could offer a much cheaper service (no expensive in-house review
team).

So here's the dilemma for Apple: 1 - continue with their publisher business
model (percentage), maximize for profit at the cost of karma and long term
risk of anti-trust lawsuits

2 - dramatically reduce cost (less or more efficient quality control),
introduce a fixed fee that developers can still afford ($500?) or subsidize
the whole operation more.

3 - keep the current system, but don't force developers to pay you. Sort of an
honor system / convenience. That seems to work well for DRM free iTunes music.

[0] <http://bit.ly/pyNwCj>

~~~
Hyena
The Apple Store, so far as I know, has some built in unsustainability because
it supports update paths but doesn't have a way to charge for that service. In
the long run, it will need either a new revenue source or a "trust" created by
initial sales. In-app purchases probably provide this revenue source.

I think the end-game here is for Apple to create an "alternative minimum
price" for apps that are free or already sold based on Apple's cost and a
margin on the App Store generally. In-app purchase cuts will be charged until
the total AMP has been reached.

That's probably a long way off, though. First Apple has to abandon an
admittedly intuitive charging system. Second, there will probably need to be a
point where the best apps are on Android and the App Store is bringing up the
rear.

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AzAngel
Amazon is not the only one. So have WSJ and Kobo. Here is the Ars article:
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/07/with-pressure-
from...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/07/with-pressure-from-apple-
reading-apps-begin-ditching-outside-store-links.ars)

Edit: wrote "and Kindle" instead of "and Kobo"

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msh
Depressing. This stuff makes me want to get a different tablet. The problems
is that IMHO no other tablet is currently competitive with the ipad 2 I own.
At least I am in the market for a phone, it will properly be a android phone
this time...

~~~
PetrolMan
Not in the vein of the topic but I figured I'd throw in my two cents: I just
bought the Asus Eee Pad Transformer and I'm really incredibly happy. I haven't
used an iPad extensively but from a basic standpoint of having a useful tablet
device I think I made a good decision.

I'd say the only major difference is in app universe but to be honest I think
the form factor reduces the need for apps. Just some thoughts.

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sprovoost
I'm curious to see how far they can and will push this. Apple is growing
rapidly and for good reasons. This action is pure exploitation as far as I can
tell, but they get away with it. Will this slow their growth? I doubt it. Will
EU anti-trust step in? Probably not, because Apple's market share is tiny.

So they'll make a few hundred million bucks with this. Ten times more and they
will face anti-trust issues. If I was CEO, I wouldn't consider a few percent
extra revenue worth the karma damage. But greed can blind even the smartest
people.

Anyway, I strongly believe different layers of "the stack" should not
interfere with other layers and that companies should accept that they deliver
commodities. Telco's should charge by the gigabyte and bandwidth, Apple should
charge for their hardware, software and whatever it costs to maintain App
Store infrastructure.

Otherwise, what's next? Should Amazon pay AT&T 40% of their internet revenue
or risk getting blocked?

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dchest
Don't forget to read customer reviews. Depressing.

~~~
buro9
I can't see them... but then, I don't have iTunes on any of the computers I
own (not even on the Mac).

Are they within iTunes and the iStore? Or is there a web link I'm failing to
spot that will let me read them?

Alternatively, could you cut and paste a couple of examples here so we could
see what's being said?

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Interesting, seems the preview pages suddenly aren't showing reviews for any
of the afflicted apps (Kindle, Nook, Kobo).

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erikpukinskis
This puts the Native vs. HTML5 debate in an interesting light. If Amazon
releases a Kindle web app, Apple has no say.

~~~
Terretta
And keep in mind, iOS was released with the capability and intent to run web
apps.

It supported, and still supports, installable web apps that can run online or
off.

Amazon can, as Google Voice did, make an installable HTML5 app that is free to
browse and one-click buy books through Amazon's system.

Curiously, Amazon has the "Amazon Shopping" app and the "Amazon Price Check"
app, showing they don't mind a proliferation of Amazon branded apps for
slightly different tasks. Reading and shopping are more different than product
browsing w/ search and product price lookup w/ search, so why not have an
Kindle Reader and a Kindle Shop app?

There's no particular reason they couldn't offer a "Kindle Shop" HTML5 app, to
have its icon right next to the Kindle Reader app. The book will get delivered
to the reader anyway.

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easyfrag
I don't think I've ever read an explanation of why Apple requires this. Is it
the 30%? or is it a user experience thing? has Apple written up why this
policy exists?

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highfreq
Amazon should add an embedded safari, and allow the user to set a home page.
Then I could just home page the online store, and have in-app-esqe purchasing.

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dean
It makes me very happy to see someone stand up to Apple. I hope some of the
other big publishers follow Amazon. Jeff Bezos is my new hero.

~~~
bradshaw1965
There is no stand. Apple required it. Same thing happened to Kobo.

~~~
dean
I realize Apple required it. But Amazon still had a choice. They could have
complied with Apple's rules and paid 30% of their revenue to Apple for ebooks
sold from within the app. And passed the price increase on to consumers.

I view it as standing up to Apple that Amazon did not do this. I think this
will be better, if a little inconvenient, for consumers in the long run
because it will ultimately keep ebook prices lower.

~~~
recoiledsnake
The real standing up would be if Amazon had refused to remove the link and let
Apple reject and/or pull the Kindle app. Then the ire of people unable to read
their Kindle books would be directed at Apple.

This action by Amazon seems to be capitulation since there was no way that the
in app purchasing system would support so many hundred thousands of books
anyway.

~~~
matwood
_The real standing up would be if Amazon had refused to remove the link and
let Apple reject and/or pull the Kindle app._

Exactly. I was hoping that Amazon and the other large content providers would
simply call Apples bluff. Let Apple shoot itself in the foot and remove all
the big content reasons that people buy iOS devices to start with.

~~~
nivals
Make no mistake the bluff was called. Apple themselves removed the app (of at
least one of the impacted few) and then required that the alternate version be
posted for sale.

The choice was either have no app available for your customers or have the
neutered version up.

FYI, most folks were smart enough to have their own 'no store link' neutered
version ready and waiting so that the app approval process delay wouldn't stop
customers from downloading and Apple forced their hand.

~~~
fpgeek
Having a 'no store link' version ready-to-go isn't calling Apple's bluff.
Calling Apple's bluff would have been not submitting a replacement version and
directly telling your customers why the app was gone.

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blipper
That blows.

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brianb722
It's Apple's platform, they can do what they want with it. The market
(including consumers, developers, and entrepreneurs) will decide whether their
rules are good things or bad things. Long term, if Apple doesn't continue to
foster development on its platform the developers will leave and then
(eventually) the customers will follow.

~~~
cageface
As long as Apple doesn't have a monopoly I agree with you. It should be left
up to the consumer marketplace to punish or reward this behavior. Thanks to
Android there are options.

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Yhippa
On one hand I suppose nobody should get a free ride. Apple put a lot of hard
work into building such cohesive and user-friendly ecosystem. If they have
their own bookstore they're trying to run why should they enable a
competitor's in their own home?

On the other hand this stinks for consumers. Slightly. They can still go to
the website on their own but Apple made it a bit more inconvenient. If you're
already a Kindle or Kobo user this shouldn't be a stretch but if you're a
startup you've probably alienated your early adopters.

~~~
neuroelectronic
| If they have their own bookstore they're trying to run why should they
enable a competitor's in their own home?

If Microsoft spent so much on R&D for Windows 95 and IE, why shouldn't they
build it into the OS? Why shouldn't they lock down their APIs to make it
difficult to make competing products inside their OS?

Really?

~~~
fpgeek
Forget IE, Microsoft put a lot of effort into Windows Media, Zune, ... Why
should they make it easy for Apple to sell music on Windows?

~~~
neuroelectronic
Interesting approach, but the problem here is Apple doesn't sell books on
iPhone (or rather 3rd parties do and they don't do a very good job of it).
This is more like a retroactive, me-to I want that market move. The Kindle app
product is far superior for reading as I understand. If you're going to
release a platform, you shouldn't be doing this kind of stuff. It's a similar
situation as net-neutrality.

