Rare climbdown after huge resistance to its 30 per cent rev share demand.
In February, Apple infuriated the media industry by rolling out a subscription model that charged 30 per cent of all on-going subscription revenues for any contract that originated in its app store. Apple also got to keep all the user data.
Publishers were allowed to set the price and length of subscriptions, and could offer subscriptions through their own websites.
But they had to offer the same terms to anyone signing up through Apple.
Content providers were outraged, as it made many services – especially streaming music for example (where licensing payments are due to other third parties) – commercially unfeasible.
Well, Apple has now changed its tune, no longer requiring them to sell subscriptions within the App Store. And it will not receive any of the revenues for approved content purchased outside the app.
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Of course, there is another solution for publishers, which is to offer web-based content and charge for that.
This is exactly what the FT did this week.
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