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Comment by YooLi | Hacker News Reader

Here is the rent Amazon charges for using their infrastructure to sell with (i.e. selling your stuff on their website).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1...

Selling a $9.99 book would end up with Amazon taking 28.5% or 38.5% (the lower percentage only if you enroll in the Pro Merchant subscription program for $39.99/month) of the price.

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The argument is off the mark; Apple artificially restricts the iPhone app market, SOLELY so they can skim money from all the apps.

Sell your stuff on Amazon, your own store, whatever; Amazon can compete in that free market, and if its worth it to you, pay their premium.

Apple monopolistically freezes out any possibility of competition; skims off of apps that have nowhere else to go.

Then they want to set your prices outside of their store too!

Perhaps you should actually read the Amazon terms first:

"By our General Pricing rule, you must always ensure that the item price and total price of an item you list on Amazon.com are at or below the item price and total price at which you offer and/or sell the item via any other online sales channel."

So, you choose to NOT sell on Amazon. Try that with your iPhone app.

You can sell on Cydia...

That's easy, you don't develop an app to sell on iPhones.

"Hey kids, go to html5-instead-of-native-app.com, subscribe to our service, and have fun or something!"

Problem. Solved.

Sell to people who jailbreak. Take advantage of Cydia. You just won't be able to reach people as easily (just like if you don't like Amazon's terms you make people jump through hoops to put your books on a Kindle).

If Apple are a monopoly, so are Amazon.

Apple have a monopolistic control over how you sell software for their mobile devices, and Amazon have a similar monopolistic control over how you sell products on their website.

Both can only be an actual real monopoly if they had no realistic competitors. This is not the case for either Apple or Amazon.

You cannot have anything but a monopoly in your OWN environment.

I.e. Apple has a monopoly in the iOS App Store. Why wouldn't they? It's their store.

That kind of 'monopoly' isn't what people mean by 'monopoly'.

They're thinking of things like telcos who have (or had, in some cases) government-granted monopolies that prohibit potential competitors from even trying to compete, or they're thinking of cases like Microsoft back in the day when they used their leverage from a dominant position in one market to attempt to force out competitors in a different (but related) market. (By shipping IE for free at a loss to ensure that Netscape couldn't profit from selling a browser, for example.)

That's why people deliberately incorrectly use the term when referring to Apple. They're trying to evoke that feeling of a big corporation with an unfair advantage.

But that only works if Android doesn't exist, and BlackBerry doesn't exist, and Windows Phone/Mobile doesn't exist, and Symbian doesn't exist (which will be true soon, I guess!), and WebOS doesn't exist, and something prevents competitors from even trying to have their own mobile platform.

I guess we're extending the word to 'corner the market on a single platform', which you clearly object to.

So lets agree to say something else - perhaps "predatory marketing practice". What do you suggest?

How about "subscription pricing"?

You are mixing two things up. Selling apps and selling goods with in-app purchases. Apple restricts the app market because it adds value to their platform (for everyone).

As for in-app purchases [what this whole discussion is about] you can sell your product (books in the example above) on your website, but you also have to make it available for in-app purchase. Also the price must be the same or cheaper in-app. These are the exact terms Amazon has. You can sell your product on your website and through Amazon, but the price has to be the same or cheaper on Amazon.

>Apple restricts the app market because it adds value to their platform (for everyone).

Provably false. I'm part of the group 'everyone' and am stating that having one market does not add value for me. I believe there are quite a few of my type hanging about.

By everyone I meant all parties involved, not every single person in the entire world (that would be a ridiculous statement):

Apple: benefits by having exclusive apps of a quality standard they can determine where the platform and the store are almost synonymous. Ex: I'm getting an iPhone so I can play that game.

Developers: Benefit by having a platform with as few barriers to purchases and a large audience. Ex: I'll target my game for iOS because there are 100M+ potentials users and popular opinion is to get an iPhone to have access to the most games.

Consumers: Benefit by having an easy method to purchase apps with a certain level of trust and a vary large selection available in one place.

Normally a free market comes up with these things.

The argument above (and in nearly every conversation on this topic) is, the Apple market is NOT free, is designed for Apple's financial benefit alone, is capricious and repressive. And the iPhone is the only market like this.

Ebay takes $2.00 minimum (~ 20%) from selling a $9.99 book plus you have to pay for payment processing yourself.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html

Payment processing with PayPal is another 6% (2.9% + $0.30) of the $9.99 price (and that's just for domestic payments; international is more).

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-receiving...

So chalk it up as 26% minimum to sell your eBook through eBay.

Wow good point. Marketplaces at scale become infrastructure !

Apple's store is not really a "marketplace" - at least not a free market. There's no competition allowed, in a market that's everywhere else free and open.

And as for Infrastructure - what does Apple own except the web site? They don't own the iPhone - I bought mine for cash, I own it. They don't own the network - ATT and Verizon own that, and I contract to them. They don't own the apps - they just try to.

That leaves them in the position of market predator - trying to make a buck by warping the market in their favor, throwing up roadblocks to anyone using their own hardware on their rented network for anything that Apple can't scam a buck from.

And how did those apps get on your phone? That's the infrastructure part. Those apps can be sold in 100+ countries around the world with payments processed and on a platform that Apple is selling with catchy commercials and by ensuring a certain level of quality. That's the infrastructure and value Apple is adding with the app store. Do you seriously think there would be 350,000 apps for the iPhone if each developer had to set up distribution and payment handling for 100+ countries around the world, and be able to do it for small payment amounts ($0.99)?

Yeah, but people on this site are pretty familiar with putting up a web sales site, and aren't going to be very impressed by that - certainly not to the point of paying their entire margin to Apple for it.

Yes its a popular site - hey! could that be because its the only site?

Google's market will also be takeing about 30% of in app purchases.

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