This week Amazon debuted a “Get Books” button — an important new feature on its Kindle for iPhone application, which complements its e-reader device. The feature takes users to an iPhone version of Amazon’s Kindle content store.
When you touch “get books,” the app provides an interface to search or browse Kindle-compatible content from Amazon. But the results of your query are delivered in a Web browser window (mobile Safari) launched by the app — and that’s where you make your purchase. The content you purchase then gets delivered to the iPhone app, as well as to your Kindle if you have one.
It’s kind of clunky, having to jump to the browser to make the purchase. But there is a sound business reason for this inconvenience.
Right now, before Apple actually rolls out the iPhone 3.0 operating system (due out sometime this summer), this hand-off between the mobile app and browser is necessary to sell stuff via iPhone. But even when iPhone 3.0 debuts with in-app purchasing functionality, I suspect Amazon will probably keep handling transactions through the iPhone browser rather than the app, even though it’s a minor usability hassle.
Why? Because that way Amazon doesn’t have to give Apple 30 percent of its iPhone-based Kindle revenues.
Apple explains: “You receive 70 percent of the purchase price of each item you sell within your app, paid to you on a monthly basis — no credit card fees apply.” Thirty percent is a pretty steep cut. However, it only applies for purchases executed from within an iPhone app. Jumping out to the browser to complete transactions seems to be a viable, if clunky, way to preserve those revenues.
…Which makes me wonder, yet again, what’s going on with The Wall Street Journal‘s online pricing model?
In a follow-up to my Apr. 22 Tidbits post on this topic, Ryan Chittum questioned in Columbia Journalism Review the Journal‘s decision to release its content completely free of charge (for now) on its much-praised free iPhone app. Chittum later learned from an unnamed Dow Jones insider that: “the reason the Journal isn’t charging for the app is simple: It can’t. The technological platform to do so isn’t up to speed yet.”
Well, maybe so for in-app iPhone purchasing, but (as Amazon is demonstrating) this is not true in the bigger picture.
So if the Journal wanted to charge for content via iPhone right now, it certainly could do so. That might make the Journal‘s current move to charge for content more credible. And so could any electronic publisher — maybe even your news organization.
It’s not that I think charging for online news is a good idea for the vast majority of publishers. Personally, I think it’s a shortsighted, backward-looking approach that cuts off market opportunities. But if your news organization is determined to go this route, the iPhone at least offers an option right now.
