Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Apple's new Subscription delivery system

Or I should say new money minting machine... We all love Apple's products and they do deliver great value in terms of usability, ease of use and reliability. I don't know.. In past 5-10 years I have been proved wrong about Apple's approach.. So I will be cautious this time. However, I do believe that Apple is becoming to greedy with their Subscription / Content Delivery aka iTunes approach. Even though I don't have Amazon Kindle and I am basically good Apple customer with lot Apple products in house.. I don't like Amazon Kindle getting hurt by Apple's new Subscription Delivery System approach. This may force me towards Android which is more free and becoming equally good in terms of value for money.
I think Apple needs to remember that whatever goodwill they have generated with iPhone/iPad etc.. can vanish in few days/weeks and customers can switch to other devices if they realize that Apple is taking them for a ride. I hope Apple will work on it and fix it and won't return to 90s depressing era where despite MAC being cool, it got hit by Microsoft badly.. In today's scenario, Google/Android is thousand times better company as compared to Microsoft. So, one single mistake by them can lead them back to same era. I hope they have learned their lessons well and won't repeat same mistakes.

I am fine with their 60% gross margin on hardware as I see direct value in it. However, I may not like paying 30% of all my online purchases to them on top of my hardware cost to Apple. They need to fix it and keep iTunes open and free to their own content competitors as well if needed.


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