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Apple Outsider » About This Whole Subscription Hubbub
archives rss contact About This Whole Subscription Hubbub Last week, Apple expanded its In App Purchase (IAP) technology to include support for content subscriptions. Without that native support, developers have been charging for subscriptions through their own billing systems. This is no longer the case, according to the latest App Store Review Guidelines. App Store apps now: May only use IAP to sell content and services from within the app (Section 11.2) Must not direct users to commerce or transactions outside the IAP system (Section 11.14) Must price IAP and subscription content the same as, or lower than, equivalent content offered outside the app (Section 11.13) First things first: IAP provides a superior user experience in most, if not all cases. I agree to buy something from my app and get it instantly with no hassle, no web forms and no worries that the provider is going to sell me out. Isn’t that all a user cares about? Right now, perhaps. But if businesses play hardball — and they might, as Android adoption continues to accelerate — then iOS users can find themselves missing out on a lot of content. That would be bad for users, and it would be bad for Apple. So let’s go over the stickier points of this debate.
