Amazon, Barnes & Noble Remove Sale Links from iPhone Apps
Apple is very particular about what can and cannot be done in their iOS apps. Accordingly, Amazon and Barnes & Noble have removed direct sale links from their Kindle and Nook apps for Apple devices.
Apple has forbidden apps from bypassing the company's commission sales structure integrated into the iOS infrastructure. Amazon was forced to remove a button in its iOS ap p that took users directly to the Kindle Store. Instead, they will be forced to go through Apple or manually load the Kindle store in the Safari browser.
Barnes & Noble, as well as The Wall Street Journal and Kobo (another e-book company), have all done the same with their own iOS apps.
Apple announced the changes to its app e-commerce rules months ago, but the deadline was June 30, which is why all the changes have taken place only recently. The changes help Apple ensure that they are making money on any transactions that go through an iOS app, meaning that other businesses are forced to pay Apple a portion of their sales or tell customers to go the long way around and manually make purchases in their smartphone browsers (a much more cumbersome process).
