Publishers won the in-app purchase battle, Apple hopes to win the war

Three weeks before the much-discussed subscription policy was to come into effect, Apple decided to change their take on the content that is subscribed to outside of the app. Now, iOS apps publishers can show content for subscribers, even if they don’t offer the in-app subscription (and give 30% to Apple). In military terms, there are two separate wars going on at the same time:

Apple wanted to use its domination in the tablet market to force publishers to share their profits they get from subscribers. For Apple, this was not about publishers (at least yet), but about the fact that they want to dominate the mobile publishing segment of the market, one of the fastest growing segments in the next years.