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Comment by jaaron | Hacker News Reader

First off, if you trace the article to its source, you'll end up on a WSJ article that says something slightly different:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870477560457612...

As far as we know, Apple has not directly set a deadline for Amazon. In fact, there's no knew information other than the date: meaning there's still a lot of questions about the subscription rates and the actual requirements Apple will have in place.

Personally, I can't see how a 30% fee for what amounts to little more than payment processing can stand. It's one thing to charge the fee for app distribution and marketing in the store. It's another to handle on billing at which even 10% would seem rather high.

I don't see this lasting. Either publishers will charge an extra fee on iPad users and/or Apple will be taken to court for anti-trust, probably in Europe first.

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Gruber recently said that contracts with publishers are generally set up in a way so that they get about 70% from all revenue. This would obviously make it impossible for Amazon to sell books on the iPad. (The publisher taking 70% and Apple taking 30% leaves them with nothing at all. Increasing prices, even if it were possible, wouldn’t help.) That's obviously not a workable situation, if Apple doesn’t change anything Amazon will just stop selling books on the iPad. (Gruber speculates that Apple will drop its cut for at least some in-app purchases down to about 5%.)

I think Amazon could resolve this really easily by doing a cross marketing deal with Apple.

But at least Apple is only taking %30. Amazon has completely excluded Apple from selling books via the iBookstore app on the kindle. In fact, you can't even read iBookstore books on the kindle because Amazon doesn't allow Apple to produce an app for the kindle.

There's nothing preventing Apple from signing up to be a Kindle developer and using the KDK to develop an iBooks app for the Kindle.

http://kdk.amazon.com/

I'd like you to point out any evidence that Amazon has excluded or rejected Apple's application, because I've never heard anything of the sort.

"active content must meet all Amazon technical requirements, not be a generic reader, and not contain malicious code"

Depends on how they define a "generic reader" doesn't it?

Does not still prevent anyone from selling books.

They don't even need to do this. If you could purchase iBooks in the Kindle Mobipocket format, there's nothing preventing you from transferring them to your Kindle and reading them.

There are plenty of bookstores that sell books that work perfectly well on the Kindle without having anything to do with Amazon. Sci-Fi AZ is just one such independent bookstore: http://www.scifi-az.com/

I think since iBoos appeared, and publishers demanded an agency model from Amazon, too, Amazon is only get 30% from that $10 price. This means if Apple takes 30% from it, Amazon will have zero left.

Amazon will either quit the AppStore in protest, and hope consumer protest will make Apple change their minds, or they'll start charging $14-15 for books instead to cover the 30% cut.

If they charge $14-$15, Apple will get 30% of $14-$15 and Amazon will still get 0% because they have to pay 30% to the publisher. That's even assuming their publishing deal allows them to change the selling price, which it probably doesn't.

There is no way for Amazon's Kindle app (and other similar book selling apps) to continue on iOS under the terms as laid out in the article. Amazon will have to create a web app that functions as a Kindle Reader in order to let their content remain readable on iOS (and that's exactly what I'd start doing now if I were Amazon, if such an app weren't already in development).

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