More significantly, it tightens Apple's hold over the revenue stream that some content publishers had hoped to wrest back from the company by selling subscriptions through their own platforms.
Under the scheme, if a customer buys the App first then later signs up for a subscription through the Apple platform, then Apple will take a 30% slice of the renewal fee. It's a move which is going to cause friction with publishers who had hoped to push subscription fees to their platforms, where the credit card processing costs would be a fraction of that being charged by Apple.
Although publishers will be able to sell subscriptions to Apps on their own websites, they won't be allowed to promote that within the App or link to their website from the App.
"Our philosophy is simple - when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app,"
Finally, Apple will also require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app - which will prevent them passing on the higher "processing fee" to the customers.
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