Apple is notoriously inflexible with regard to fees charged for App Store – even with a new transfer policy for long-term subscriptions, introduced a few years ago, several platforms (such as Spotify and Netflix) prefer not to offer a way for users to subscribe or buy their services through iOS, preferring to redirect them to their websites and releasing the obligation to share 30% of the purchase price with Apple.
THE Amazon performed a practice similar to its application streaming, The Prime Video. In the United States and some other countries, the platform offers rent and sale of separate films / series to users, as is the case with Apple’s Apple TV app – it is worth noting that, in Brazil, the app offers only access to original or licensed content. for a fixed monthly fee.
The point is that, in the iOS app, until now, users who tried to buy or rent content in the app were referred to carry out the transaction on the Amazon website. Not anymore.
Since yesterday, US users can buy and rent Prime Video content for iOS without leaving the application; the payment infrastructure, however, is Amazon’s own, not Apple’s – which, in principle, would not be possible under App Store rules. What witchcraft is this?
According to Apple, it’s simple: Amazon became part of a “program for video applications premium”- a program whose existence was unknown to basically everyone until now, but which, according to information from Bloomberg, is already used by other services, such as Altice One and myCANAL, by Canal + (the latter, amazingly, since 2018).
The program allows services to use their own payment systems within iOS applications, presumably being able to keep all the revenue generated from purchases, rentals and subscriptions. Apparently, the benefit is offered only to selected Apple partners, and not in a general way – which may explain the fact that Netflix and Spotify, for example, never entered into a similar scheme.
In other words, the program is basically a comadre agreement: Apple offers the benefit to companies with whom it maintains friendly relations (and, in its view, will not threaten its own business) and, in return, enables a more user experience. satisfactory to customers of these apps – which is sometimes preferable to receiving a few extra dollars in quarterly revenue.
It remains to be seen whether, now that the program is publicly known, Apple will expand it to other companies. It is twisted that yes.
