Apple launches subscriptions on the App Store


Today Apple announced the introduction of in-app subscriptions, allowing consumers to purchase a weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly subscription.

The new addition will make it easier for consumers to upgrade and purchase subscriptions from within their favorite supported apps, using their iTunes account to make the transaction, rather than off-site transactions which could possibly be unsecured.

With in-app subscriptions, developers can incorporate a quick transaction method for consumers, where Apple will take a 30 percent share of the transaction, giving the remaining 70 percent to the developer. Starting today, Apple will no longer accept apps that link to external websites that perform subscription transactions, forcing developers to give up 30 percent of their profits to Apple.

However, Apple is still allowing publishers to create out-of-app subscription based models on their websites, where Apple won't receive any of the profits from the transactions, but developers must include their own authentication methods in the app to unlock the subscription-based services. If publishers do create out-of-app subscriptions, Apple requests that they offer the same subscription services in-app for the same price or cheaper.

In the announcement, Apple also announced that they offer more than 350,000 apps to consumers in 90 countries, with more than 60,000 of these apps being native iPad apps.

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