Steve Jobs blocked Amazon Kindle purchases
 

Antitrust inquiry into Apple's antics

According to a collection of internal emails recently released by lawmakers, as part of the House Judiciary Committee's antirust probe into Apple, a series of Amazon advertisements prompted Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller to block in-app purchases of Kindle books on iOS.

The Kindle app for iPhone and iPad does not allow users to purchase ebooks directly. Users can read the ebooks they've already purchased, but to buy new ones, they have to use Safari. This is Amazon's way of avoiding giving Apple a 30per cent cut of ebook purchases, which would be required if Amazon sold ebooks directly within the Kindle app itself.

But in 2011, you could buy Kindle ebooks directly in the Kindle app on iOS. Two sets of emails included in the internal documents include conversations between Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller, and other Apple executives regarding this situation show that Apple used its AppStore to force Amazon into line.

In one email, Schiller explained that Apple initially made an exception for Amazon because "users would be buying books on a Kindle device and later accessing them on iPhones". The idea was that as Apple sold more iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches, however, Schiller thought it was time to drop this exception.

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