If you’re been reading the interwebs today you’ve likely stumbled across some disturbing information about how Apple rejected the Sony Reader application and isn’t going to let it into the store. Then there was some fear mongering about Apple rejecting Kindle, Nook and others as they may be tightening their grip around the App Store. But soon Apple came out and said don’t worry… we’re not changing the rules we’re just enforcing them now. It’s ok sheeple, go back to sleep.
But that’s bullshot. Here’s how Apple just kicked every eBook reader you love out of the app store:
First a quote:
“We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines,” company spokesperson Trudy Muller told me. “We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.” (source)
Ah yes. We’re not changing the rules. We’re just going to make sure people play by them. Unfortunately if you look at the (devil) in the details of that statement, you’ll find that the rules are impossible to play by.
Basically this boils down to change your CORE sales infrastructure to include Apple in your sales. For the big players (Sony, Nook, Kindle) you’re talking about a HUGE change in purchase structure, tracking and download setup that I wonder if they will even be able to integrate into their current infrastructure, let alone be willing to endure.
If you purchase a book through the App Store, Apple doesn’t give the developer your username (or any other real identifier information) and say that you specifically purchased a product. They give the developer information about what was purchased. Now – if you’re Amazon for example – how do you take a sale and associate that to a user account in your system so that the user can then turn around and re-download that Kindle book on another computer? Here’s how: You take the purchase receipt from Apple and the in-app product ID (one per book) and you then associate that to the user’s Amazon ID and update their transaction history on the backend. So no big deal if you’re got good DBAs and programmers as I’m sure these companies do. But did you catch the detail there? There’s one “in-app purchase ID” per item you wish to sell through the App Store and they have to be unique. Which isn’t a big deal for Amazon since they already have unique IDs for every product in the Kindle store. But, not only are you building new logic into the purchase backend, but you also have to uniquely identify each for sale item to Apple through iTunes Connect (where developers upload the app to Apple).
Every product you wish to offer in your store must first be registered with the App Store through iTunes Connect. When you register a product, you provide a name, description, and pricing for your product, as well as other metadata used by the App Store and your application.
You uniquely identify the product using a unique string called a product identifier. When your application uses Store Kit to communicate with the App Store, it uses product identifiers to retrieve the configuration data you provided for the product. Later, when a customer wants to purchase a product, your application identifies the product to be purchased using its product identifier. (Store Kit Overview)
Since that doesn’t sound like a big enough PITA for someone like Amazon to have to manage and maintain for every book in their inventory, then there’s this little detail in the iTunes Connect Developer Guide:
You can create up to 3000 separate product IDs assigned to your In App Purchases per app in iTunes Connect. This number refers to the number of In App Purchases, not the number of purchase transactions. (iTunes Connect Developer Guide)
Seems a bit limiting since Amazon touts over 810,000 books on their store now doesn’t it? What’s Amazon going to do? Release 270 different apps so they can sell all 810k books? Doubt it.
So, Apple PR spin be dammed. In my mind they just told Sony, B&N, Amazon and everyone else to kick rocks and stop playing in their sandbox.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS: App Store, sony
