Apple has announced a new subscription service for publishers of content-based apps, such as magazines and newspapers. The service which had, until now, only been seen in the News Corp. app The Daily, allows subscriptions to be bought from within an app and use the same billing system as In-App purchases.
Publishers can set the price and choose from six subscription frequencies; weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly and yearly. Customers choose the length of their subscription from within the app and are charged accordingly. They are then charged regularly according to the length of their chosen subscription. Users can manage subscriptions from their iTunes account page. Apple takes a 30% of all subscription fees. Publishers can also offer subscriptions, full price, discounted, or free, outside the app, for which Apple won’t take a cut of the revenue.
‘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.
There is one caveat: publishers must not offer a better deal to subscribers outside of the app than they do from within it. ‘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,’ said Jobs.
The provision of personal data, such as name, address, and postcode, to publishers who offer in-app subscriptions will be optional. And it will be the responsibility of publishers to protect the privacy of its subsribers and comply with relevant data protection laws regarding storing customer information.
