4
More tablet wars for Apple and Google
Convention attendees use Samsung Galaxy Tab Android tablets at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
To view this content, Javascript must be enabled and Adobe Flash Player must be installed.
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Apple announced this week it's going to let media companies sell subscriptions for the iPad. Long awaited is a fair characterization for that development.
But Marketplace's Steve Henn reports a lot of publishers aren't happy about it at all.
Steve Henn: If you buy an app like Angry Birds for your iPhone or iPad, Apple takes a 30 percent cut of the price right off the top. But buying on iTunes is incredibly easy. So video game publishers embraced the system and many made fortunes.
Now Apple wants to apply similar rules to subscriptions for magazines, streaming video services like Netflix and music offerings like Rhapsody. Even book purchases made through Amazon's Kindle app will be affected.
James McQuivey is at Forrester Research.
James McQuivey: From the consumer's perspective, this makes so much sense. 'I am already here in the app -- you want me to read this new book? Why not do that just by clicking on this button?'
Thing is, when you buy anything through an iTunes app, Apple takes 30 percent. So companies like Amazon and Rhapsody that were already selling subscriptions through their apps and keeping all the money are furious. Starting in June, if they want to have an app, they'll have to give Apple's its slice.
Shubha Ghosh, a law professor at University of Wisconsin, says Apple maybe violating anti-trust laws.
Shubna Ghosh: So it's tying access to the platform to these terms. It's saying take it or leave it essentially.
And Apple dominates the tablet market. But analysts like McQuivey say it may have just made things easier for its fiercest competitor -- Google Android. Google announced its own subscription plan today, telling publishers:
McQuivey: We are to give you more flexible terms than Apple will and all we are going to ask is 10 percent, which positively seems peachy at this point.
Getting publishers to turn their backs on Apple completely may be impossible. The real question is whether Google can create enough competition to force Apple to back down.
In Silicon Valley, I'm Steve Henn for Marketplace.
The both brands are very tough competitor for each other. They are introducing the new technologies to the market and creating new era. There are innovating many different features in their tablets. They both are offering very exciting deals for more market share.
dailytrader.com/
Maybe Microsoft should charge internet companies ~30% of whatever we buy on the internet using our computers running windows operating system.
Also if you buy a car from Toyota and fill gas at SUNOCO, 30% of the fuel money should go to TOYOTA.
Next time I rent my house to someone, the energy company should pay me 30%, because I brought a new subscriber to them.
......many more examples.....APPLE is now worse than Microsoft. Gosh this SUPERcapitalism.
Really, so if I purchase a book at the Amazon web site, Amazon pays Apple for every Apple device that I send this book to -- I don't think so. Last I checked, you don't purchase anything with the iPad Kindle app. The most you can do from it is open a Safari (www browser page) to the Amazon Kindle online store. At that point, I or you are out of Apple's app interface.
The kindle app is nice, but not why I purchased the iPad. I haven't yet to acquire a stand alone kindle device, but it is something I've wanted. With this news, I think that may just be sooner than later.
And about the iPad, I'm still not sure as to why I got it. Portability perhaps. But no where near as capable as a laptop. I've tried to increase my use of it, but it's just not the same. For example, when I write, I use dictionaries and often view reference material in other windows. This highly productive habit is not possible on the iPad. The iPad is for the casual user . . .
