If the iPhone doesn't have things like Pandora, Evernote and many other cloud services available because of this change, it makes one of the most useful parts of the iPhone disappear.
Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
21–30 of 94 posts
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#22Of course Rhapsody can't sell their stuff for a 30% margin. It's not their own stuff! They're trying to be the last link in a chain of 90/10 (or more) splits. They repackage record labels' repackaging of artists' content. Do you think the artists would find 30% economically untenable? The App Store is 70/30 because Apple can take things straight from content producer to customer. When the Apple takes the place of pub…
Apple's argument is that they deserve 30% of all revenue streams for getting a customer on board. For 30% of revenues, you could hire a true sales force that goes out and actively sells stuff, rather than just sitting back and hoping someone signs up. In the App store model, you still need to sell on your own, Apple just centralizes payment and distribution. Thus, I'm not sure I follow your logic.
Payments: Visa, Paypal, Amex, MasterCard, and many others would gladly handle the payments for ~2%. Not sure where you're getting anything about inventory and shipping given it's digital content. Sales: when did actually do any selling for anyone's product other than when it was mutually beneficial? You still need to sell it to people to actually use your product. Publishing: again, what is apple doing here? Distribution and a little bit of marketing, sure - but that's certainly not worth the other 28% of revenues.
Also don't see why Rhapsody repackaging stuff makes it any different. Shouldn't a true app store model work for any type of business?
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#23Of course Rhapsody can't sell their stuff for a 30% margin. It's not their own stuff! They're trying to be the last link in a chain of 90/10 (or more) splits. They repackage record labels' repackaging of artists' content. Do you think the artists would find 30% economically untenable? The App Store is 70/30 because Apple can take things straight from content producer to customer. When the Apple takes the place of pub…
Apple's argument is that they deserve 30% of all revenue streams for getting a customer on board. For 30% of revenues, you could hire a true sales force that goes out and actively sells stuff, rather than just sitting back and hoping someone signs up. In the App store model, you still need to sell on your own, Apple just centralizes payment and distribution. Thus, I'm not sure I follow your logic. Payments: Visa, Pay…
I think you overstate the willingness of existing payment processors to deal with, say, .99$ purchases (they likely won't bother). I'm not arguing that Apple's providing a service that's worth 30% to everybody, but building a payment processing system to handle sub-$1 charges cost-effictively isn't trivial -- and if you're not in the business of building payment processing systems, you might just pay the rent. Amazon could handle rolling their own; Packt probably can't.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's argument is that they deserve 30% of all revenue streams for getting a customer on board. For 30% of revenues, you could hire a true sales force that goes out and actively sells stuff, rather than just sitting back and hoping someone signs up. In the App store model, you still need to sell on your own, Apple just centralizes payment and distribution. Thus, I'm not sure I follow your logic. Payments: Visa, Pay…
I think you overstate the willingness of existing payment processors to deal with, say, .99$ purchases (they likely won't bother). I'm not arguing that Apple's providing a service that's worth 30% to everybody, but building a payment processing system to handle sub-$1 charges cost-effictively isn't trivial -- and if you're not in the business of building payment processing systems, you might just pay the rent. Amazon…
They would bother if they could get 30 cents on the dollar instead of their measly 2
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#25It's deeply disturbing that the people at Apple feel entitled to radically change the rules of the game whenever it suits them. This is like an extortion racket. Submit to their demands today only to find out what new whim strikes them tomorrow. How can iOS legitimately be called a "platform" when Apple pulls a leg out from under it every six months? Thank god Android scares them. I can only imagine what they'd dare…
"I can only imagine what they'd dare without any competition."
I don't remember anything evil during the height of the iPod era.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#26Of course Rhapsody can't sell their stuff for a 30% margin. It's not their own stuff! They're trying to be the last link in a chain of 90/10 (or more) splits. They repackage record labels' repackaging of artists' content. Do you think the artists would find 30% economically untenable? The App Store is 70/30 because Apple can take things straight from content producer to customer. When the Apple takes the place of pub…
Apple's argument is that they deserve 30% of all revenue streams for getting a customer on board. For 30% of revenues, you could hire a true sales force that goes out and actively sells stuff, rather than just sitting back and hoping someone signs up. In the App store model, you still need to sell on your own, Apple just centralizes payment and distribution. Thus, I'm not sure I follow your logic. Payments: Visa, Pay…
I'm comparing it to a retail model. So I included sales but not advertising.
Every retail outlet is different, and App Store purchasing has a very particular set of advantages. If you don't need those advantages, the App Store still provides a great value by letting consumers access your service through a free app.
If neither of those work with a particular economic model, then I guess it's just not App Store compatible. So yeah, there's definitely room for a better model of app store that suits more developers. But I think Apple is more concerned with getting a broad selection of content than making the economics work.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#27It's deeply disturbing that the people at Apple feel entitled to radically change the rules of the game whenever it suits them. This is like an extortion racket. Submit to their demands today only to find out what new whim strikes them tomorrow. How can iOS legitimately be called a "platform" when Apple pulls a leg out from under it every six months? Thank god Android scares them. I can only imagine what they'd dare…
See Tim Bray's essay, which should be titled "Are You a Sharecropper?" http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...
tl;dr: "[Apple] owns the ground you’re building on, and if they decide they don’t like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you’re toast." In this case, if they decide the rent covers your garden plot as well as the fields, you ante up or die.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#28It's deeply disturbing that the people at Apple feel entitled to radically change the rules of the game whenever it suits them. This is like an extortion racket. Submit to their demands today only to find out what new whim strikes them tomorrow. How can iOS legitimately be called a "platform" when Apple pulls a leg out from under it every six months? Thank god Android scares them. I can only imagine what they'd dare…
"I can only imagine what they'd dare without any competition." I don't remember anything evil during the height of the iPod era.
Well, there was the iPod accessory rings to jump through, but that’s fairly standard.
What’s seen as evil here is really a preference for the user over the content provider, and it’s the content providers who are whining about not getting everything their way.
You never hear any users complaining about subscription plans not automatically giving away their information.
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, a payment processor is exactly what they are in this case. Consider what Apple is attempting to do to Amazon's Kindle service: users can purchase Kindle ebooks directly in-app but Apple takes a 30% cut of the payment. Amazon still hosts and provides the content, all Apple does is act like a payment processor like Visa or Paypal. Clearly Apple wants to shove out competition to it's own iBooks, iTunes and movie ser…
And yet there seem to be a lot of books as apps on the App Store considering there's this 30% cut. What kind of inside track should Amazon have on the poor shlubs who sell their books as apps?
The poor schlubs who sell their books as apps haven't cut out the middleman.
With Kindle (or iBooks), the author simply uploads his/her work in a commonly exchanged format. Everything else is handled - distribution, payment, formatting, device compatibility. The works.
As an author who wants to publish their book as a discrete app, suddenly you're engaging with a different middleman - the inevitable app vendor. The vast majority of book authors aren't coders and wouldn't know how to publish an app to save their lives, much less on multiple platforms (Android, iOS, webOS, WP7, along with their phone and tablet variants). Inevitably they will buy this solution (which, in essence, is largely of the same nature as Amazon/Apple) from someone else.
And what will we, as consumers, have seen from this situation? More confusion and a worse experience overall, as every single little piece of content now floods the app store, obliterating any sense of discoverability while making the UX much, much worse (downloading a discrete app, along with all of its code and media, every time you want to read a book?!)
Re: Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's argument is that they deserve 30% of all revenue streams for getting a customer on board. For 30% of revenues, you could hire a true sales force that goes out and actively sells stuff, rather than just sitting back and hoping someone signs up. In the App store model, you still need to sell on your own, Apple just centralizes payment and distribution. Thus, I'm not sure I follow your logic. Payments: Visa, Pay…
I'm comparing it to a retail model. So I included sales but not advertising. Every retail outlet is different, and App Store purchasing has a very particular set of advantages. If you don't need those advantages, the App Store still provides a great value by letting consumers access your service through a free app. If neither of those work with a particular economic model, then I guess it's just not App Store compati…
And for those who don't need the help with payment, distribution, etc Apple is forcing them to take it. Do you think Amazon really needs Apple's help in processing or distributing any of their content? I'm pretty sure the WSJ has plenty of experience handling payments as well.
I paid several hundred dollars for my iPad, and for that price I'd like to do whatever I want with it and be able to take advantage of the greatest things people have built for it, not what Apple approves of being done. The issue I have is that Apple's feeling of entitlement inherently blocks out many incredible things from that iPad. E.g., I bought a bunch of books on the Kindle app so I could read them on any device. Apple could have done the same by getting off their asses and building iBooks for other devices, but they chose not to. And now that advantage of Kindle is gone because Apple wants to take every last dime from anyone doing anything on an iOS device? Many business models cannot survive having to give up 30% of revenues. It is a poor model.
Edit: I guess I wouldn't have an issue if there was an alternative way to get native stuff onto your device other than Apple's app store. But there isn't.