“A recurring theme at Gadfly is Amazon.com Inc.’s ambitions to do everything under the sun,” Shira Ovide writes for Bloomberg. “It looks as if the company now wants to become a quasi app store similar to Apple or Google’s mobile versions.”
“Amazon on Monday created a single spot for people to sign up to digital subscriptions from companies including the Los Angeles Times and digital file cabinet Dropbox,” Ovide writes. “For the hundreds of millions of customers who have Amazon accounts tied to their credit cards, it’s easier to buy from Amazon than handing over their personal information multiple times to sign up individually for Dropbox, the New Yorker and SlingTV.”
“Amazon has previously sold subscriptions such as these, but this is first time it has packaged them in one place for customers to browse and purchase. If what Amazon is doing sounds a lot like Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store for Android phones, you are correct,” Ovide writes. “What if Amazon decided to take an even smaller share of revenue from subscriptions, or none at all? Presumably that would put pressure on Apple and Google to follow suit.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is potentially very powerful. If successful, this is just more proof that Amazon’s enormous influence continues to grow. It’s also proof that competition is good.