Apple courts controversy with Sony Reader snub

Wednesday 02 February

Apple has tweaked its developer terms

Apple has never been afraid of sticking to its guns, no matter who the opposition, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at its refusal to give the green light to the Sony Reader app this week.

Sony may have thought it was just a formality going through the App Store application process, and that the Reader app would soon be proudly sat next to the rival Amazon Kindle offering on Apple’s content treasure trove. But it was wrong.

Apple rejected the app on two grounds, first that it sanctioned in-app purchases from outside Apple’s payment system, and second that it allowed the transfer of content purchased outside that system onto Apple devices.

Sony, as you might well imagine, isn’t pleased. “It’s the opposite of what we wanted to bring to the market,” Sony’s Steve Haber said. “We always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store.”

With the move prompting a fair degree of reaction online, Apple moved to clarify it’s position. “We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines,” a spokesperson said. “We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.”

So to fix things, it seems, all Sony has to do is offer Reader users the chance to buy content directly within the app as well as through Sony’s servers, which would see Apple getting 30p of every pound spent.

The picture could be even more complex for Amazon, however. According to Apple’s clarification, the Kindle app will now have to be amended to offer customers the same option, making things considerably more complicated, and probably less profitable, for the online retail giant.