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Why Amazon may not care about in-app purchase

by Erica Sadun Feb 23rd 2011 at 12:30PM

In all this furor about the App Store and in-app purchases, we have not heard a peep from Amazon, the 800-pound gorilla of external content. (TUAW long since contacted Amazon for a statement, and like everyone else, never heard anything back). Chuck Toporek of Addison Wesley/Pearson has a particularly insightful post up on his personal blog explaining why this may be so.

Amazon's Kindle for the Web has been in beta since September 2010, offering a potential web-based alternative to a native iOS app. Toporek writes that in his tests, Kindle for the Web worked beautifully for desktop and iPad, while the iPhone "takes a little extra work, but it can be done." Being in beta, full book texts are not yet available, but if Amazon wishes to leave the App Store, it has a fully realized solution that it can move to that is already deployed and being tested.

Perhaps more content-dependent developers will be returning to Steve Jobs' original "sweet solution" of Web-based applications as the IAP drama plays out and HTML 5 continues to mature. The best way to deal with an unaccommodating Apple App Store may be to sidestep the store entirely.



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In all this furor about the App Store and in-app purchases, we have not heard a peep from Amazon, the 800-pound gorilla of external...
 

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AdamC

Wow so many were saying if Apple wouldn't allowed the kindle app they preferred to go iPadless. Yes get a kindle while at it get a playbook and the xoom.

Anyway this is just personal preference so get whatever suits you best.

May 18 2011 at 12:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
XNS

BOYCOTT APP STORE PURCHASES.

Even if Amazon comes up with a Web reader, great value of the Kindle app is reading offline. Apple's new subscription policy is so onerous it makes me, a died-in-the-wool Apple fan-boy, want to be ready to move to Android. If Kindle leaves the platform, so will I, and I do not want to put more App purchase $$ at risk. So I from now until this clarifies will BOYCOTT APP STORE PURCHASES.

February 24 2011 at 7:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Yuusharo

HTML5 is perfect for this type of application. Sure, there are limitations, but I've run webapps like Voice Central Black Swan and it felt damn near native. Amazon could definitely pull it off.

I'm hoping more services will do the same, though they do miss out on the exposition the App Store creates.

February 23 2011 at 4:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
carroll.jk

It better work better than Google's, is all I'm saying. And they should build a TTS-capable browser to point at it.

February 23 2011 at 4:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael Kaufman

I am the biggest Apple Fanboy I know, but if I were to lose two of my three most used apps (Zinio and Kindle reader), I would just keep using my current iPad until it died, and then I would replace it with something that could run those apps.

Apple certainly has the right to do whatever they want on their platform, but if they think they will make more money from me by blocking my favorite apps then they will by my annual upgrades, they are sadly mistaken.

February 23 2011 at 4:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joey

I love my iPad with all of my heart but if they force the Kindle app out....
I might have to reconsider. I have been purchasing a shit load of Kindle books recently, I've got bookmarks, notes, and highlights that I really want to be able to reference easily. I really hope Amazon and Apple can work this out. A web app looks like a promising solution, but I'd rather they just work it out.
I think Apples rule is ok for subscriptions but for one time purchases of things like books I think they need to reconsider their cut.

February 23 2011 at 1:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Joey's comment
yoinkers

I agree. I love my iPad and apple products, but I'll seriously consider ditching the iPad if I lose the kindle app. Amazon won the book race, I will not buy another book on the apple bookstore because they are locked to iPhone and iPad.

It would be a hard choice though, very hard.

February 23 2011 at 3:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gk

I think HTML offline apps are restricted to 5MB of storage so this would be a no go from the start?

Also Amazon can't apply their DRM to their books this way.

Highly doubt going HTML5 is how they're solving the problem.

February 23 2011 at 1:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Gk's comment
RCook

According to this website: http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci944596,00.html#anchor1

the complete works of Shakespear take up about 5Mb so no actually if were just talking a book I would imagine that it should work just fine really. I have several Amazon ebooks and the size isn't that great, for example 'The Temporal Void' is 672 pages and takes up only 1.2Mb.

February 23 2011 at 2:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike

I like this solution a lot. It's good for competition. It will help HTML 5 mature faster. It keeps the rich from getting richer. I hope this turns out to be true. If Amazon does it successfully expect everyone else to follow suit.

I believe in balance between hardware and software innovating the market. Right now it feels like hardware is winning and Apple is behind that push. For years Microsoft was a pusher and windows was the software that formed future hardware. I think the consumer loses when one side is pushing harder than the other.

February 23 2011 at 1:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dagamer34

Problem with web apps is that I haven't seen any that run offline on a mobile device that run well. It's theoretically possible with HTML5, but is the performance there? Are the controls there? Is it responsive enough on a mobile browser?

February 23 2011 at 12:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to dagamer34's comment
tuaw,com

I don't run many web apps at all, but I tried "Pie Guy" once (a Pac-Man sort of game), and it worked just fine on my iPhone at the time (don't remember which model it was). I doubt it did much with persistent storage, but I wouldn't expect that to be a big issue performance-wise.

February 23 2011 at 1:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tom

Exactly. Amazon isn't dumb enough to assume that every iPad owner is going to only ever read while on wifi or only owns a 3G-capable model. If the Kindle app is pulled, Kindle is dead on iOS, period - people will not be going the web-app route. This is not the answer, people. There's something going on we don't know about. Amazon and Apple are probably negotiating something that will enable the Kindle app to work as-is. Apple is well aware that Kindle's presence convinced a lot of people to buy into iPad in the first place. Without it, they could very well see lower sales - don't doubt the power of readers. I know that I have been won over by ereading, and I don't say that lightly. I had absolutely zero interest in using the iPad for this and now love it. Take away the Kindle app and I'll likely just buy a Kindle, not use iBooks.

February 23 2011 at 1:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
rblon

Or they don't care because they are going to offer iOS-only books through the App Store, while same-priced books bought at their website can be used at all platforms.

February 23 2011 at 12:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
4 replies to rblon's comment
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