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By Chris Meadows

In a continuing development to Apple’s surprise announcement that it would enforce in-app and out-of-app purchase parity from now on, mocoNews reports that European publishers are convening an invitation-only roundtable in London February 17th to consider Apple’s new subscription rules.

Publishers report feeling “betrayed” by the change—after hyping the iPad and investing in apps for it, Apple is turning around and requiring them to make an option available that will rob them of 30% of their revenue and access to the analytical data that they use to make many purchasing decisions.

Adding to the sense of betrayal is the inconsistent nature of how Apple contacts publishers and others who make iOS apps.

“Apple has been contacting some publishers, and not contacting some. Some get emails, others get informal phone calls,” [Grzegorz Piechota, the European president of the International Newsmedia Marketing Association] said. “The whole process of accepting or rejecting apps is not transparent. It’s very hard to explain why some apps are being accepted and some are being refused; some apps allow you to read content that is bought somewhere else and others that won’t let you do this.”

Jim Dovey, Kobo’s Apple Platforms Team Lead, has posted an essay to his Tumblr blog explaining why these new rules are such a problem. Apart from meaning that Kobo’s entire profit for these sales would go to Apple, it would also mean that most people who read on iOS devices would purchase books that way just because it’s convenient. Apple could change the rules of the store, of course, reducing its cut, but it doesn’t seem likely.

And in obscuring purchase information, it makes Kobo’s recommendation system less workable.

Think about this: I buy 10 books. 8 of those are for other people. Based on that knowledge alone, any recommendations would be based largely upon what I purchased for someone else. However, if I bought 2 books and *gifted* 8 books, then the distributor can make much better recommendations. The analytics can also benefit when looking at gender & age groups in certain content, because it’s not seeing a 35-year-old man buying Twilight, it’s seeing it gifted to a 12-year-old girl. Additionally, we are able to determine what ago groups, etc most of our readers are in, not just the ones who hold the purse-strings. At present, Apple doesn’t make that much information available. We would be sacrificing that.

And this newly-enforced policy could have implications that reach beyond just e-books and periodicals. If Apple applies it consistently across all applications, it could also affect apps that are adjuncts to paid services available elsewhere—Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, and so on. What if these companies potentially had to give up 30% of their iOS device revenue by offering subscription buy-ins from within the apps themselves?

Of course, judging by what Grzegorz Pierchota said above, the only thing Apple seems to be able to do consistently is tick people off, so it’s probably premature to worry about it. But Apple could find itself in for an interesting time if it manages to arouse the ire of not just e-book and magazine publishers, but also major Internet media companies.

Android tablets are suddenly starting to look better and better.

 
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