Market Data

2011

That, says a team of Merrill Lynch analysts, is the hit it would take in Kindle book sales

The button circled at right on Amazon's (AMZN) popular Kindle app for the iPhone will have to be removed if the company wants to continue doing business in Apple's (AAPL) App Store. That's because it takes customers out of the store to Amazon's website, where readers have been buying books for nearly two years.

The prohibition against such links is one of the conditions Apple is imposing as part of a new policy announced last week -- along with a 30% cut in any so-called "In App" sales and a rule that prohibits third parties from passing that extra charge onto their customers.

Full article: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/23/apples-new-subscription-policy-could-cost-amazon-80-160-million-per-year/

2011

Journalism is changing fast. And as news businesses experiment with new ways of creating and delivering journalism in the digital age, Google is keen to play its part on the technology side. Over the last year, we’ve been partnering with publishers around the world to develop technological solutions - including, most recently, One Pass - to find new and engaging ways of presenting stories online and to generate greater revenues.

As well as our focus on technological experimentation, we’re also investing at the grassroots level. Last October we announced that we would be giving $5m in grants to non-profit organisations working on developing new approaches to journalism. At that time, we allocated around 40% of the total fund to the Knight Foundation in the US.

Full article: http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2011/02/investing-in-news-innovation-in-europe.html

2011

WASHINGTON—U.S. antitrust enforcers have begun looking at the terms Apple Inc. set this week for media companies who want to sell their content on its popular iPad and other devices, according to people familiar with the matter.

Thomas Catan explains why U.S. antitrust enforcers have begun looking at the terms Apple set this week for media companies who want to sell their content on its popular iPad and other devices.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission's interest in Apple's new subscription service is at a preliminary stage, and might not develop into either a formal investigation or any action against the company. But it comes as Apple has attracted growing antitrust scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, said Thursday that the commission was aware of the new subscription service and was "carefully monitoring the situation."

Full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657704576150350669475800.html

2011

When Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily launched last week, Apple’s VP Eddy Cue got on stage to announce one-click subscriptions for iPad publications through iTunes. The Daily already has the one-click billing option as a feature, and Cue promised it would be made available to other iPad newspaers and magazines soon. Cue then started to make the rounds of print media companies in New York City to explain how subscription billing will work on the iPad.

Who will have control over subscriber revenues and data has long been a point of contention between print publishers and Apple. The magazine and newspaper companies want to be able to control subscription billing by sending readers to their own sites to process iPad app subscriptions, but Apple is insisting that they use iTunes. To get through this impasse, I’ve heard that Apple is offering a compromise. Publications might be allowed to route subscribers to their own websites or payment portals to grab their credit card numbers, but they will also have to offer the option of subscribing through iTunes.

Full article: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/08/apple-subscription-itunes/