Re:DOJ Calls for Apple to End Book Deals, Link to Rival Book...
by AsymetricCom on Friday August 02, 2013 @10:57PM
(#6150889)
I've read articles saying that Amazon's App store does this. i.e. if they see you selling your app cheaper for iOS, they can go pricematch it. Or, if you give it away for free, Amazon can do the same thing an pay you nothing (since a percentage of zero is zero). AFAIK, Apple won't do the same thing, they'll just reject your app if it uses the wrong APIs or competes with a market they want to own in the near-term.
Wait...
So Amazon bought all their eBooks on the wholesale model, basically, they pay a fixed price for the book, maybe $5 and sell the book for whatever... including selling for a loss if they choose.
Apple came along and said we will sell for whatever the publisher of the book wants us to sell for... and then we will take a percentage of that.
Now forgive me for my shameless selfishness here...
but that immediately calls to mind the App market to me.
So I have a question...
Would "...in other markets..." mean that Apple could conceivably be barred from letting me sell my App for whatever price I wanted on the App store? Or does it mean that they would just have to provide a link to my app on another store that would be selling my app at a loss?
I hope that's not true. In this case, that would mean that Apple, Amazon and Google would get to set the price at which one could sell one's app, since they own the store, and I would be just the publisher.
Well... technically, they couldn't set the price I could sell my app at, they could only refuse to buy my app and put it on their store for anything but their "wholesale" price.
I hope none of this applies to the app market.
Sigh.
Maybe I should have gone for that Law degree.