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SkyDrive 3.0: Microsoft Gave Up Fighting Apple's 30% Cut
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft on Wednesday released SkyDrive 3.0 for iOS out of the blue. Last time the app was in the news, Apple was stopping Microsoft from pushing out an update in the App Store because the company doesn't pay a 30 percent cut of the subscription revenue it generates. Now we've learned how Microsoft managed to update its iOS app today. 'We worked with Apple to create a solution that benefited our mutual customers,' a Microsoft spokesperson told TNW. 'The SkyDrive app for iOS is slightly different than other SkyDrive apps in that people interested in buying additional storage will do so via the web versus in the app.' Does this set a precedent for an iOS version of Microsoft Office?"
It sounds like Microsoft didn't so much as give up, as go around Apple. If you buy on the web, Apple doesn't get the cut. Microsoft got the app into the app store. Pretty much seems like Microsoft got most of what they wanted, and Apple got nothing other than the ability to say their policy is still unviolated. Which, considering the nature of it, isn't exactly a great marketing ploy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The majority of iOS users would not want office since they do not use it in a productive manor. They use it to text, play games, and send pictures of their penis's / boobs to random people. no need for an access database to sort your penis pix.
"Does this set a precedent for an iOS version of Microsoft Office?"
No, it means I'm now officially tired of both companies. I hadn't realized that computers had just become red-tape machines instead of facilitators.
Microsoft offered up this compromise months ago. And besides, I thought the SkyDrive fight was just being used as a proxy, since the real battle is over Office revenues. No way in hell Microsoft lets Apple get a 30% cut of Office 365 revenue.
So Microsoft had to follow the same rules as every other developer...even after all of their stalling & complaining? Either pay the 30% cut to have in app purchases or have the purchase separate on the web & sync it separately. Just like Amazon and Nook and everyone else. And what precedent would it set? MS will put up a free "read only" version of MS Office for iOS in the app store, make you go to the Microsoft site to purchase it, and you'll get a key to unlock the remaining functionality or give you access to the Office 365 features. No big whoop. Microsoft is just learning that their name doesn't inspire fear and the need to immediately comply to their demands anymore, and it frustrates them. In the future, the same thing will happen to Apple. It's how the tech world works out.
"Dr Stephen Jobs must be rolliing over in his grave
This says that as long as your app makes its revenue outside of the Apple walled garden, you don't have to give Apple a cut
And now this establishes a legal precedent for a framework of similar deals in the future for every app developer, contingent upon the proper legal framework (i.e., a class action lawsuit if necessary)"
I guess you hadn't noticed, but that's been the choice for as long as there's been an iOS App Store. And there have been companies selling products through their web site that are then accessed in iOS apps for YEARS. Have you heard of Amazon? Netflix? Hulu? So the "news" is that MS made the same decision that those companies did. So it's not a new thing, not a dramatic precedent, and wouldn't upset Jobs since he's the one that set it up that way.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
I wonder if any developers have bumped up rates for in app purchases (+30%) while still giving the option to buy on the website w/o the premium. Not sure if this would violate any rules, but this would seem to offer customers a choice, while exposing Apple's cut for convenience.
Things came to a quick resolution after Steve Ballmer threatened to throw a chair at Tim Cook.
Apple explicitly allows this - I think this goes back a couple years with Kindle stuff. If you sell through apple, they get a cut. If you are going to take money thought the app, you have to do it via the AppStore, thus Apple will get a cut. The other provision is that if you allow you app to merelty talk to an existing "subscription", you can do that. You just cant do purchases, or exchange money through the app. For example, I can go to Amazon's web site and buy a Kindle book and link it to my Amazon account. I can get the Kindle app and look at any books in my Kindle account. I CANNOT however purchase books through the Kindle app while NOT doing this through Apple and the AppStore. This is why you can read Kindle books, but not purchase them via the iOS app.
Pray they don't alter the deal any further.
Even if Amazon could 'afford' it, they wouldn't. Amazon doesn't need Apple's service to make people realize you can buy e-books from Amazon. They've spent a lot of years getting people up to speed. A startup, on the other hand, selling (for instance) car service manuals on iPhone would find it worthwhile to pay Apple the 30% because otherwise nobody would have a clue that you had to go to such and such a website.
Companies might have to start issuing license keys in this manner for their s/w to get around Apple's stubbornness..
- Download app for free from the store
- On first launch, app sends you to a webpage where you can buy a license
- Copy-paste license key into app (or something like that)
Apple's basically messing with the user experience by being stubborn.
They don't "allow it" - the only reason they don't try to extort money from companies selling via any other channel is because it'd be racketeering.
Apple are a bunch of fucking greedy assholes.
Right -- which is why they're doomed to fail eventually. They just refuse to learn from their own past -- they've had their 5 years of glory with the iPhone and the decline is on hand now.
Unless you're a Meerkat, in which case manors are available but they are dry, dusty, and full of holes.
Which is why you need to compare the meerkat first. Simples.
Companies might have to start issuing license keys in this manner for their s/w to get around Apple's stubbornness..
- Download app for free from the store - On first launch, app sends you to a webpage where you can buy a license - Copy-paste license key into app (or something like that)
Apple's basically messing with the user experience by being stubborn.
This is not allowed. What is allowed, and many companies do, is that you sign up on their web site and can then access the service on iOS. Or you get free access if you already have the service, the IOS app is just another delivery mechanism - e.g. you get The Economist free on the iPad if you subscribe on paper.
In tights?
Yeah, right.
I remember when all the retailers were up in arms about credit cards and the exchange fee. How dare Visa and MC add a 3% surcharge in exchange for paying the retailer immediately and incurring all the risk of actually collecting the money owed. Recently the credit card companies want to up that surcharge a bit and it is getting massive media attention. "Would you pay 2% more for your clothes" and all the like...
Now shift over to Apple's business model. It is the same damn thing....ya know, except Apple charges 30% and provides nothing except "the privilege" for your app to charge the credit card that Apple has on file. They area pass through, nothing more. And yet, no one seems to care about this?
How is this not anti-competitive? How is this not abusing monopolistic power? And yes they are a monopoly the second you buy their device and are 100% locked into their store and their rules. How is it that every other company that has done this is taken to task but Apple gets a pass? I don't get it.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
This is not allowed. What is allowed, and many companies do, is that you sign up on their web site and can then access the service on iOS. Or you get free access if you already have the service, the IOS app is just another delivery mechanism - e.g. you get The Economist [economist.com] free on the iPad if you subscribe on paper.
Right -- bad example on my part -- but the larger point is that Apple's disallowing all kinds of things because they want to get that 30% -- and that's inconveniencing users (paying by the easiest method possible, and not having price of all apps increase by 30% would be the convenient thing) -- and in that way they're actually screwing their own ecosystem, the effect of which will be felt over time.