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Apple required Amazon to remove book-buying portion of it iPhone App
February 26, 2010 | 5:08 pm
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By Paul Biba
If you have an iPhone you know that when you want to buy a book you have to leave the Amazon book reading app to do it. This will not be the case when Apple launches its own bookstore for the iPad, and will thus give Apple a competitive advantage over Amazon and Barnes & Noble. According to the Silicon Valley Insider:
Amazon didn’t built the app this way from the beginning. We have learned that when Amazon first submitted its Kindle application for the iPhone to Apple, Amazon included its own payment system within the app, so customers could just pay for e-books and download them right in the app.
When Apple spotted the payment system, it told Amazon to get rid of it, according to a source familiar with Amazon’s operations.
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Comments:
Not a big surprise. I seem to remember you used to be able to browse the actual Fictionwise store from within eReader, but they changed it to launch a browser.
(I wonder if Stanza still lets you buy from the Stanza store within the app itself?)
They only recently started allowing purchases within iPhone Apps that might have been the actual problem was Amazon sorta jumped the gun before they allowed anyone to do that.
They probably could put that back in now.
Not exactly. They allow in-app purchases if Apple gets 30% of the money. It is, shall we say, doubtful Amazon would ever agree to that.
One of the use cases given in the iPhone SDK for the ‘Store Kit’ API is:
“A book reader application that allows the user to purchase and download new books.”
the catch being, as others have mentioned, that in order to do so you have to be willing to use Apple as the payment processor for your app. Can’t see Amazon (and other companies with a large on-line presence/store going for that.) For a small developer, it MIGHT make sense. YMMV.
Can anyone spell “anti-trust” lawsuit? It’d be a bit odd to see Amazon filing one, but they just might have a case–that is if Amazon opens up the Kindle to outside purchasing.
And in Europe? I’d say it was a slam-dunk there. The EU won’t let a U.S.-owned ebookstore have ease-of-use privileges denied to European companies.
This sort of niggling behavior is why an iPad isn’t likely to make it on my purchase list for many months. Too many issues floating about.
Well, given that, as of today Apple has only around 25% of the US smartphone market, and exactly 0% of the Ebook market and 0% of the tablet market, it might be a bit premature to start talking about anti-trust.
Like Chris said, I also heard the main reason is because Apple gets a 30% cut of any purchases made from apps. Amazon can easily circumvent that by directing customers to their own site.
Well folks I don’t think Amazon will let you sell anything through there website or their Kindle without taking a sizeable cut so what is the difference?