apple shows it's crappy side - explaining no flash on iphone

Posted At : March 6, 2008 11:28 PM
Related Categories: Web Dev, Crazy, GRRR

I was just commenting on Tech crunch regarding apples release of the iphone SDK. One thing first: Iphone is cool tech. Its sexy, and easy to use. It offers little new, but its new version might. That said...

To sum up, apple said: 'if you want to sell your app on the iphone, you must sell through itunes, and apple will take 30% fee for doing the sale processing for you'.

If Microsoft announced today that it was releasing app development on its mobile OS that is a very significant part of smartphone market share and that the only way for us to sell apps on its phone was to pay 30% to use MS own app distribution's site would the entire world shit bricks? Yes it would. This is exactly why flash isn't offered on the phone. Flash would skip the entire distribution model for Apple, and apple got confused an thought it was 1990 and that it should own distribution, creation and manufacturing (hello music industry?).

If this were google, or MS the world would be all over them. Apple is sexy, but it isn't without its evil/greedy sides and itunes / iphone shows it.

And before someone comments on it, and suggests apple is charing 30% for the cost of the transaction and downloads, etc. That is only cool if it is an OPTION, and not required. Fact is if I sell my app for $50, there is no reason apple should get $15 just for the sale and download. That isn't to say people can't make money, its only to say that it isn't right, its shitty business ethics and I expect more from Apple.

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If you don't like the model, don't sell your apps through iTunes & don't get the exposure. I'm sure you can still offer it up for download through your own eComm distributor of choice if you'd like. Apple is making it easy for you to do. Charge nothing for the app and Apple still does all this nice work for you.

30% isn't peanuts, but I wouldn't expect Apple to charge only 10% either. Just my opinion. Seems pretty fair to me. You can distribute locally internally in a company too... we'll see how that works. That might be a one time charge or maybe even free.

# Posted By Eric Dolecki | 3/6/08 11:04 PM

The vast majority of software publishers take at least the 60% of your sale just for the pleasure of putting your application on their web site. 30% seems reasonable to me, considering that they also manage the distribution of applications updates. Also, the fact that the user may buy my applications right from their mobile phones, without having to input CC numbers and other, it is a great relief, users have a central point of distribution that can trust. I'm not sure which market you are referring to, but last time I've checked the vast majority of web sites was offering FlashLite content for free not for sale. If you want to sell on your own, you can take care of the 450 millions devices with FlashLite onboard rather than the 4 millions iPhones out there.

# Posted By Emanuele Cipolloni | 3/7/08 5:09 AM

The point is that I have no option. I must use their distribution. It may be a good deal, it may be a bad deal, but it is in fact the only deal. It's smart on the one hand in that they now control distribution, and medium. It doesn't mean I have to like it, or think that it is appropriate that Apple gets a free ride doing this while other companies would be railed against for doing the same thing.

Should we now be happy if all apps for OS X must go through itunes with the same deal? What about ALL music for any device?

Regarding flash, I honestly don't care. But it does shed light on Job's comments about flash just the day before. Performance may be an issue, but so is control of distribution. Having flash or silverlight offered on the phone moots the whole itunes model.

# Posted By joshua | 3/7/08 8:33 AM

At first blush, this exclusive Apple-only option did not pass my "smell test". But after some thought and consideration, I realized it was a pretty darn good deal for everyone in the ecosystem. And you REALLY have to think of this differently than you would for standard software: Like Apple has said from the very beginning, at the end of the day the most important aspect of a phone is that it is ALWAYS a great, reliable PHONE. Apple has to have some control over the software that they allow on the iphones to maintain reliability. Do we really want to deal with malware, viruses, bandwidth/cpu hogs, etc on our primary communications device? I sure don't! So as a consumer, I really like having Apple act as the "gatekeeper", and as a developer, I don't mind paying the price of admission.