Recently there has been quite some talking around subscription revenues for publishers, especially after Apple introduced its subscription service (which is now under scrutiny by both US and European antitrust authorities) in conjunction with the launch of News Corp’s The Daily - the first newspaper specifically thought for the iPad.

In a nutshell, publishers can only sell subscriptions for their iPad newspaper/magazine via an in app purchase, which grants Apple 30% of the price paid by the user. Thirty-per-cent! Lots of money…
Moreover, it’s essentially prohibited to sell subscriptions for iPad publications other than via in app purchases, so there’s not really a choice for publishers. You can deduce that when you read what Steve Jobs said on the topic:

“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”

Or perhaps there is a choice. Or there will be, actually. The choice is to create browser versions of the content you want to publish - instead of apps - and HTML5 will increasingly allow for that, blurring the boundaries between a “full app” and a browser based app.

This doesn’t apply just to the publishing business but can be held true in general, since Apple is enforcing in app purchases across the table (all apps must comply by 30 June 2011 or will be kicked out), so I wonder how many apps really need to exist as full fledged apps and can’t instead move towards a browser based approach, which the full introduction of HTML5 will help become more app-like than ever (not yet, since HTML5 is still under development and not fully supported by all browsers).

Also, Apple is attracting critics and acrimonious competition because of its recent policies (not least the continued support of the h.264 video codec vs. VP8, supported by Google) and I wonder if this will help its competitors (with Google leading the pack?) to speed up the evolution and standardisation of HTML5 to threat Apple’s dominant position.

One thing I learned the hard way with my start up (started before the social media / Facebook revolution was under everyone’s eyes) was to avoid at all cost to build a standalone website/service unless it was the only possible way to develop your business. Otherwise it’s much better to “stand on the shoulders of giants” and build your service and audience on top of social environments such as Facebook - of course - Twitter, etc. as well as leveraging all the data available through all sorts of APIs. No excuse for not doing it…

Going back to this post’s topic I then wonder whether apps are truly necessary for publishers, or whether a browser based approach may increase revenues and adoption (since OS compatibility would be much easier).

Thoughts?