Apple In-app Purchase Policy – Understanding The Pros & Cons.
What is Apple’s new in-app purchase policy & how does it affect people from different areas?
In-app purchases are used to sell content in numerous categories. Available content ranges from services, new features, and even subscriptions. On an Apple store, a user is independent to make purchases on/for an iPad, iPhone, Apple watch, and Television.
The in-app purchase is divided further into four main categories:
- Consumable: An in-app consumable purchase could be anything that can be exhausted with time or usage. These mostly include subscriptions, purchases for games like coins or gems, or maybe progress in a particular game.
- Non-Consumable: Non-consumable items usually come with one-time purchase options. These items can include filters for a phone camera, business application with one-time purchase options e.t.c.
- Auto-Renewable section: These services come with a subscription that gets exhausted in a time frame. The consumer needs to refuel the quota to keep the service working. These services could be a subscription to a monthly magazine or a yearly purchase for an upgraded feature of an application.
- Non- Renewing Subscription: There are certain limited-time features or one time purchases bought from the app store. Due to their fewer availability, it is hard to renew their subscriptions. Therefore they remain as a non-renewing subscription due to their limited availability.
In the month of February, Apple made some crucial changes to its in-app purchase policies. However, Apple received criticism for these policies.
In a statement issued by Apple to the media, regarding the in-app purchase policy; “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 apps.”
The statement raised concerns, as the publishers/developers of these services had to pay a large chunk of their share to Apple. The calculated share was estimated to be 30% of their earning.
The implemented policy included all the products. These included magazines, newspapers, videos, movies etc. Even the high stake players like Hulu Plus, Netflix, Spotify, and Rhapsody did not get any flexible walk away.
The biggest challenge was the 30% revenue that these applications had to share with Apple.
To avoid any purchases outside the Apple environment, Apple does not allow any external purchase mechanism that can grant users a subscription in Apple. Hence, there was no backdoor entry for anyone. It was clear that if these companies wanted to serve their business to the audience of the Apple environment, they have to bow down to the laws laid by Apple.
Another restriction for the application is that they can not link themselves to the Amazon website.
After facing criticism from several competitors, publishers, developers, and even service providers, Apple made changes to its policies.
The new rules allow developers and publishers to set the price of their products and services according to their convenience. However, the restriction on linking external sources within the application is still prohibited.
Apple is not forcing Amazon to sell their books in the Apple store. If Amazon decides to do so, they are allowed to charge a premium amount from the customers. It will help Amazon compensate the amount to Apple.
Another reason for the change in policy could be the Financial Times application winning an award for the best web-based application. The application can bypass the Apple AppStore and can open in a browser.
However, Financial Times will continue to host their application on the Apple platform, but they aim to direct the audience on to their browser-based web-application.
Though the FT Times new web-based application created a polarity amongst the other publishers. They have to decide their future with Apple-store.
Reddit Beats Facebook And Telegram In The Race Of Cryptocurrency.
While Telegram and Facebook are still facing issues in their planning and launch of their cryptocurrency, Reddit took the leap and launched it’s very own crypto for its users named “Moon”. The working strategy of Reddit cryptocurrency is different from that of Facebook and Telegram. But at least for Reddit, the game crypto is on.
Image credits – Reddit
Reddit has always been in controversies, it is a discussion platform with around 430 million active monthly users. The Reddit cryptocurrency will provide people with the lucky chance to purchase exclusive badges on the website. They can even buy exclusive emoji GIFs and post them as a comment. As stated, the Reddit game plan for the cryptocurrency is a lot different when compared to others. The Reddit crypto will be available to around 1million users from the midsummers.
Reddit Crypto will not work as a cryptocurrency launched for in-game cash prizes or like other video games cash. It is an actual cryptocurrency that is running on Ethereum Network. We shouldn’t forget that Reddit has a huge user, and launching its cryptocurrency means that it will be ahead in the game from tech companies like Facebook and Telegram.
These other tech companies are fighting hard to enter the cryptocurrency market for a long time now. They have even faced clashes with regulators and authorities of the court regarding this decision. Telegram, on the other hand, has discontinued his plans of cryptocurrency launch after getting knocked down several times by authorities. Facebook is continuing with his struggle to make sure that his cryptocurrency Libra enters the market at the soonest. But synopsis says that Facebook’s Libra can’t be launched any soon.
Aaron Brown, a crypto investor and a writer at Bloomberg Prophets says, A “possibility is the plan is to introduce the currency and get people used to it and then gradually build it into a valuable general exchange currency.” The currency can further be used to buy content, subscription, or even to purchase goods on websites or even beyond that. A trading system can also be created using the currency.
Image credit – Reddit. Distribution schedule.
Even if all that is possible it won’t be happening anytime soon. The reason being, before circulating the crypto exchanges have to list tokens and needed to be named differently for each Reddit subgroup. The user should be able to set a digital wallet to accept currency using Reddit mobile app using Android or iPhone.
According to Reddit, the cryptocurrency is just a try-out. Other subreddits are running tests on cryptocurrency. Fortnite BR is one such example that people utilize for playing Fortnite: Battle Royale. The concept of the token is very common among gamers. V-buck is another popular example which people can purchase or earn while playing the game.
“We continuously run experiments to explore features that engage our users and communities,” said Reddit spoke person, based in San Francisco. “With Community Points, we’re working exclusively with two communities to test this feature and gather feedback from our users.” It was further clarified that Fortnite Epic has no association with this effort of Reddit.
But some crypto analysts have their doubts clouding in their minds. They think that the awards of community point can be related to “karma.” Reddit uses “karma” as a source of income, for example for posting a smart comment.
Will Price, a data scientist at researcher Flipside Crypto says that Reddit needs to be careful with the policies and usage of its cryptocurrency so that the users don’t misuse the cryptosystem. Also, Reddit is keeping 20 percent of the tokens for itself, the users might not be united with it.
Price adds “That being said, if all goes well, this could be the first step towards a more engaged and invested Reddit community, raising the bar for quality content creation and curation.”
