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Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

Apple phones push iTunes and iBooks (soon Beats), and you can't buy Amazon digital content in the Amazon apps because they don't want to pay Apple the 30% tax. Either way Apple will always encourage you to buy from Apple's storefronts.

Google pushes Google Play for music and books. Similarly it's in Google's interest to push people to the Google storefronts.

Apple and Google make up basically 100% of the smartphone/tablet market. If Amazon doesn't get in there they may slowly get pushed out. They don't lead in music (iTunes?) or video (iTunes/Netflix?) or apps (Apple's store), and they certainly don't want to lose their position in books.

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If Amazon wanted to lead in music they could try this crazy new strategy called: offer a quality product.

You're Amazon. You ARE datacenters. So why the ever-living-hell can I not buy FLAC-encoded lossless tracks? There is an utterly negligible cost in providing this content, its the only market which still moves CDs so there's obviously demand, but no one is touching it?

Simple, less than 1% of the population can hear the difference (and I'm not convinced the remainder isn't sampling error.) - I'm certain as soon as there is a overwhelming demand for it, Amazon will support it.

I'd point out, that Apple doesn't event support its own lossless codec for downloads, and they are arguably the market leader.

Apple phones push iTunes and iBooks

Actually, the reverse. Apple's goal is to sell more hardware; software/music/books/videos just exist to draw users into the ecosystem and keep them there. Apple doesn't care where you get your content (though iTunes & iBooks makes it more "sticky"), so long as you use Apple hardware and buy more of it. That iTunes & iBooks & etc make Apple truckloads of cash is just a bonus.

Google's MO is to gather as much info as possible. Selling music & books just gives Google more data to mine. Again, the truckloads of cash is a great bonus.

Amazon, however, is all about selling content. The Kindle line (Fire phone included) exist just to persuade customers to buy more - hence the magic find-and-buy-this button and other cart-greasing features.

Do Apple really push it though? I mean I have an iPad and survive very well with all my real physical CDs instead of music from iTunes. It isn't like it pushes you to buy from them or notifies you to buy. Am I right in remembering that the old Amazon tablets used to advertise on the lock screen?

BTW, I didn't realise that they were renaming iBooks to a daft name like Beats. Thanks.

They also push iBooks the app (it cannot be uninstalled anymore in iOS 8), but you can just buy DRM-free books on O'Reilly or download PDFs and sync them between Mac and iPad.

I don't have an Amazon tablet, but my Kindle has ads for completely uninteresting books right on the home screen.

I don't understand why Amazon hasn't tried to buy Netflix. It seems like a natural fit for their business model.

Netflix's market cap is 19% of Amazon's.

They missed their opportunity in mid to late 2012 when NFLX hovered around $65. They're in the high 400s now.

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