Apple Truly is Becoming the Evil Empire

All Things Digital posts about Apple's denial of Sony's e-reader app which should be sending big giant red waving flags at Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Noble. Let me paraphrase what Apple is trying to say here and then discuss the real life impact on folks like you and me.

Apple's main premise is that if Amazon (for example) wants to offer a book for sale on their website, they must also offer that same book for purchase from inside the iOS Kindle App. When you buy that book via the app, Apple wants a 30% cut. I'd be willing to guess that 30% doesn't even exist in the profit margin of many of these books so either Amazon has to be willing to sell the book at a loss or they must raise the price to cover the cost thereby screwing over you and I so that Apple can add more masses of money to their swelling treasury.

If you've ever surfed the iBook store, you'll note that there isn't much material up there for sale. The reason? I suspect it's because Apple wants such a huge cut of the profits that it leaves little or no incentive for publishers to sell through them. What else could explain why those same publishers gladly sell their wares through Amazon? Smart consumers like me have figured this out. We go to Amazon, we buy the book there (for less), we download the free Kindle App into our iPads and sync the book into it, voila! But Apple's not happy with this democratic process. Instead of waking up and realizing that it's being greedy with the publishers, it closes this door and forces us, the consumers, to pay the margin Apple wants.

My suggestion is that Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony and the others should comply with Apple's draconian policy. They should enable in-app purchases of all the material available on their respective sites but they should charge an "Apple-imposed mobile service fee" of 30% with a notification that the same product is for sale for 30% less when purchased from their web site. This would point the consumer in the right direction for their inevitable ire.

Apple is making a huge mistake here. They're making their competitors' hardware look more and more attractive every day by lifting the curtain and showing us that they really do control the content on their customers' devices. To the degree that they exercise that control, fewer and fewer people will buy the devices themselves which HAS to impact Apple's bottom line far more than the 30% they want of my purchase of the latest Tom Clancy novel. I suspect we're going to hear about some lawsuits soon. This will be one of the few times I root against Apple. I'm disgusted right now.