Books not necessarily, but the Kindle platform does offer subscription services for Magazines, Newspapers, blogs, etc. Under Apple's current wording, it appears that Amazon would be required to add an in-app option to subscribe to those offerings and would be required to fork over 30% of all subscription revenue if a user chose to use the Kindle app to subscribe instead of using a different Kindle platform option.
Why do people care so much about Amazon? Amazon is a middleman, so why not cut them out? Magazines, Newspapers, and Blogs can go directly through Apple and keep their same 70% cut.
That's replacing one middleman (Amazon) with another (Apple). Also Amazon typically has much better selection then Apple, not to mention all the content you already purchased on the Kindle store and were planning to read with your iPad becomes inaccessible, if Apple does end up pulling the Kindle app.
> "Why should publishers and customers have two middlemen?"
That's the point, there aren't 2 middlemen. There is only one: Amazon. Apple wants to take Amazon's place by asserting their privilege over the platform.
I believe the last time I saw this retort on HN, someone pointed to some "how to develop for the kindle" information that Apple is free to use if they choose. Until they do so and Amazon rejects their work, the retort does not hold up.
You're proposing publishers cut out Amazon as a middleman and replace them with Apple, another middleman. I don't know Amazon's cut, but it may not be worth the effort to switch if there's no financial gain.
If content, quality and prices are equal between the AppStore subscription and the Kindle store versions, I have no incentive to buy from the AppStore when it's less feature rich than a Kindle version which can seamlessly sync and move between PC, Android and iOS. AppStore purchases are stuck on iOS devices, and the Kindle's display is the preferable reading screen for many people.
To be fair, it's not limited to Amazon either, B&N and the Nook are in the same situation.
But why should content sellers need to have such a middle man at all with the current technology? If there were a subscription-based-content reader installed on my laptop, I could just pay the content provider with a credit card and Dell would not be getting a cut.
Abstracted to middlemen in general, since most of it applies:
Convenience, product visibility, uniformity of services, buying power, plus they assume certain risks on my behalf (dealing with shady/inexperienced suppliers, maintaining distribution channels, chasing refunds, notifying me of recalls etc). It's the same reason I go to a grocery store instead of making trips to a dozen or more local farms.
In the digital arena, product suggestions are becoming important too. Amazon has a fairly accurate profile of what I like, and can show me stuff I might like but would never discover on my own. Independent niche suppliers can't build that profile and they usually don't want me checking out their competitors.
There's also the consumer willingness to trade product rights for cost savings. O'Reilly sells non-DRMed PDFs of their books on their own site, or I can buy a DRMed copy from Amazon for half price. For a book that'll might be antiquated in 3 years, that savings starts looking pretty good.
"Current technology" is no magic bullet either. The cost barrier of the infrastructure is lower, but it still requires talent a supplier may not specialize in to run it. Selling your own product poorly is probably worse for you than paying someone else to do it well.
The way I read it, this would only concern Amazon with the Kindle app if it had newspaper/magazine subscriptions in Kindle for iOS. Currently it doesn't, so I don't think it's a problem. That said, IANAL...
I hope your interpretation is the right one, but it's still problematic in that Amazon can't offer their subscriptions in-app without price matching instead of (cost + 30%). I don't know the exact breakdown, but I'm pretty sure the iPad is not the primary Kindle reading device. Adding a useful feature like in-app subscription purchases now has a huge negative incentive for Amazon.
I don't think this means that you are required to build subscription functionality into your app if your app's company offers any sort of subscriptions. So if the Kindle app on iOS doesn't support subscriptions yet, then they aren't compelled to do so, right?
