Subscriptions On App Store Announced!

Apple has its own announcement coming out with a lot of text in it just as MWC picked up pace. Apple has finally detailed out how subscriptions on the App Store would work and this was necessary as ‘The Daily’ which was free for the first few weeks would now start accepting subscriptions from users. But the announcement today brings subscriptions to everything i.e. magazines, newspapers, video, music etc! The subscriptions tires are weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly and Apple would keep 30% of the revenues, just as it does for apps. There would be a personal account page where subscriptions can be managed by iTunes users and the thing that worries us is ‘the automatic renewal of services’. So as it seems some services might configure themselves as auto renew unless we cancel them manually 🙁

Steve Jobs statement below also makes Apple’s stand clear on how it wants to handle ebooks and subscriptions by parties that already have a good following.

“Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app. We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers.”

So if the daily sells subsctiption on its website or on a store front, it need not pay Apple. But for all sales via iTunes, Apple would charge its 30% cut. Sounds fair to us. Here is the full release.