Apple's subscription plan launched

Apple has launched a new subscription plan for its App Store that is modeled off one used with the app 99-cent-per-week iPad, The Daily. The plan is designed to simplify in-app purchases, and while license gives publishers and developers to market their goods outside the App Store, imposes some restrictions which may discourage some big companies like Netflix and Amazon from participation.

Here's a look at the subscription policies of App Store:

Price and duration of subscription: Publishers can set their subscriptions to be weekly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly. How to subscribe to a periodical, the customer pays in advance for the duration of the subscription. Subscriptions are handled through the user's iTunes account.

Privacy

Apple leaves the burden of privacy to the Publisher. Any information provided through the App Store are sent directly to the Publisher and under the auspices of privacy, not Apple's policy of the Publisher. Apple requires that customers have a "clear" choice about sharing information and who need to be aware that "all supplementary information will be handled under the privacy policy of the Publisher, rather than Apple."

Billing

The same system used for billing, applications, and in-app purchases will serve for the subscription service. In most cases, Apple will take 30% of the profits. However, publishers can market and sell their app subscriptions outside of App Store-on company Web sites, for example-and may even waive fees for existing subscribers. When this occurs, there is no exchange of customer information and "... the Publisher retains 100% [profit] and Apple earns nothing," Steve Jobs wrote in the press release. Subscriptions to out-of-app must be offered within the app as well, for the same price or less.

Here is where it gets tricky: Apple nixed the Publisher's ability to send to users outside of the app to purchase content or subscriptions, and made it clear that newspapers and magazines are not the only Medium targeted-video and music services are as well. Amazon's Kindle app sends users to the mobile version of the Kindle Store site for shopping-a strategy that must change if Amazon plans on doing future business with Apple. It also may mean that other services, like Rhapsody, Spotify, Netflix and Hulu Plus, he'll lose 30 percent of sales in-app or divert.

Move to another platform, such as Android, seems not to be a sustainable economic decision, though, since Apple still dominates the growing Tablet market. Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo postulated that some may feel the urge to charge users more iOS to compensate for the loss of 30%-that would obviously angry consumer.

Another question: is this the same plane to Mac OSX App Store?