Today’s June 30th. That’s an important day for app developers. It’s the day Apple expects app makers to comply with new guidelines saying you can no longer link directly to a way to buy in-app content out of app. Hulu Plus has already jumped through that hoop, but you know who hasn’t? Amazon with its Kindle app.
Although Apple has recently softened its revised in-app purchasing rules, allowing app makers to sell content without forcing them to offer that same content through iTunes’ at the same price (and giving Apple a 30% cut), Amazon has yet to comply with the revised rules that require them to remove their prominent “Kindle Store” link from within the app, which takes shoppers to Amazon’s website. Neither has Barnes & Noble or Borders.
This frankly isn’t a big surprise. Amazon and Barnes & Noble have hundreds of thousands of ebooks they’d need to make available in-app to comply with Apple’s new rules, regardless of whether they link their external, web-based stores.
This is bigger than just a link to an external app store. Apple’s new in-app purchase rules were specifically designed to kill Amazon’s Kindle platform under iOS, and to comply with Apple’s rules, Amazon must submit all of its ebook content to the App Store team. That’s a huge amount of work, and effectively puts control over the Kindle e-bookstore on the iOS platform directly into Apple’s hands.
What we’ve got here is a good old game of chicken. Amazon and Apple are both staring each other down and seeing who blinks first. Let’s hope it is Apple: otherwise, this could be the last day any of us can buy books through Amazon’s native Kindle app.
[via MacRumors]
