Apple taking a bite too far?

This week, we have mostly been at the FT Digital Media & Broadcasting conference, and have mostly been hearing everyone berating Apple – and now Google too – for “skimming” 30% off the price of everything and, Apple in particular, trying to control everyone and deny users choice.

I have to say as a consumer of digital media, content, music and so on from many years and having done it all almost exclusively through Apple I used to think its was just sour grapes: we didn’t think of it , and they did and its just not fair.

But I am starting to come round to the idea that actually, while iTunes was great at seeding the market and did the necessary in shaking up the moribund mobile content market, it now wields too much power, tries to control too much of what the consumer can do and is, frankly, a bit old hat.

But could it all be set to change? Independent apps store GetJar – the second largest apps store after Apple’s – is seeing some surprising results from letting users buy apps with one click billing and is getting rave reviews from developers about how it is making apps fun again – and not taking such a hefty cut.

Amazon is also planning its own apps store and rumour has it that one of its USPs will be that it won’t be taking as big a slice as Apple and Google.

And then there are the UK’s mobile network operators. I have written already this year (and at the tail end of last) that they are widely tipped to start offering much better revenue shares on mobile billed sales – partly to start making mobile billing seem more attractive to the vast number of retailers who want to see mobile become a payment too, but also to apps and other m-commerce related vendors, who are crying out for a better payment tool that delivers better revenues.

As the video on TelemediaTV suggests, this would give them not just the icing, but would give them the cake.

The idea is that developers could benefit so greatly from, say, a 90:10 split (rather than Apple’s 70:30) that they would do all in their power to plug operator billing as their preferred payment channel. This, in turn, would give operators and massive new revenue stream. Enough to more than make up for the historically high payout rate.

It would also open up operator billing – and related telemedia add ons – to a much wider use in retail and other m-commerce arenas. It would also be a massive boost to stopping MNOs becoming bit pipes. Not that I think there is anything wrong with being the pipe: we all need pipes.

Forget trying to be content providers, the networks can become the billing and payment channel – as well as being the delivery pipe. And the developers, SPs, telemedia companies, media players and brands – as well as the consumer – all win. And Apple looses. Surely that cheers all you Apple haters up?