Did you know that Amazon takes a 70 percent cut on all Kindle subscription deals? This is true for all newspapers, magazines and blogs that push content through this hardware platform. In contrast, the new capabilities of the Apple iPhone 3GS that premiered yesterday allow for content purchase directly within iPhone applications, with a reported 30% cut going to Apple.
Granted, Amazon offers free connectivity to Kindle users, and the cost of this service needs to be absorbed somehow, but it’s hard to understand their huge cut when they’re not creating the content. Given the more favorable terms, and the ubiquity of the iPhone, it’s no wonder that publishers are lining up with ideas to offer their own content or subscriptions to the device.
Apple also added the capability to geolocate the reader within a few blocks radius so that applications can read a rough location, and serve content and ads that are location targeted. The new model to push hyperlocal content that’s of great relevance to the reader could delay the need for a subscription charge.
It’s clear that the media model is in a dramatic state of flux this year. The approach of these two different platforms provides just one perspective on how diverging content delivery models may shape the future of hardware development.
Credit to Editor&Publisher and Newsweek for their stories about these media shifts.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Get it while the getting’s good, Amazon. Kindle may be cool now but ultimately folks will demand more. The Kindle will fuse with the Netbook concept to create a more robust, yet compact and versatile mini tablet PC for even more broad functionality, and other vendors are already nipping at your heels.
(or so I’m dreaming, anyways…)