Say what you want about Apple, but more often than not the company realizes its mistakes and tries to make things right again. That also now appears to be the case with some of its draconian in-app subscription rules which have threatened to kill off many publishers’ business models.
MacRumors is reporting that Apple has quietly made an about-face with its guidelines for in-app subscriptions on the App Store. Perhaps in an effort to boost the popularity of its forthcoming Newsstand feature in iOS 5 when it launches this fall, the company has removed the requirement that subscriptions be “the same price or less than it is offered outside the app” which was proving controversial for many publishers.
Also gone is Apple’s requirement that non-App Store subscriptions must also be offered as an in-app purchase -- publishers may now offer in-app subscriptions for whatever price they’d like, and are free to offer an even lower price outside the store as well.
Back in February, Apple rolled out its App Store subscription plans, which were almost immediately met with a firestorm of controversy. Cupertino had been lax about the hard-line rules in the beginning, setting a June 30 deadline for publishers to get on board with the new policies -- or leave the App Store.
There was immediately confusion as to which apps the new rules applied to -- was Netflix or Hulu Plus considered a “subscription”? Worse yet, third party companies such as Zinio faced an imminent threat to their entire existence on the App Store, since they operated their own digital newsstand, offering a wide variety of titles from various publishers and certainly couldn’t afford to suddenly give Apple 30 percent of their likely low-margin revenue to begin with.
According to MacRumors, section 11.14 of the App Store Review Guidelines now states that apps are free to play content “subscribed to or purchased outside of the app” -- which seems to let Netflix, Hulu Plus and many others off the hook -- but apps are still prohibited from including a “buy” button that takes the user outside of Apple’s ecosystem.
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ilikeimac
June 09, 2011 at 8:50am
I'm surprised by Apple's reversal, but it is probably the best decision for the iOS platform. I don't feel much pity for third parties like Zinio (a.k.a. "middle men"); the upshot of Apple's now-defunct rules was to encourage content providers to maximize their income by working directly with Apple.
But Apple has yet to provide publishing tools for their platform, so there's probably a need for third parties that help with the transition from written content to app. Also, Apple would have faced a never-ending train of publicity problems as new business models create gray areas and either get upset for being rejected or make other app-store rejects upset by being approved.
