SingTel vs Local iPhone Developers
Seeing the success of the app store, SingTel has smartly cooked up its own scheme called SingTel App Zone to get developers to sign up, offering marketing support of their apps in exchange for a 30% cut of a developer’s income.
Given that SingTel has no way to bypass Apple’s App Store for the iPhone, SingTel’s cut of the developers income would be on top of the 30% that Apple takes. That leaves the poor developer with just 40% of the sale price of their apps, and in this age of throaway 99 cent apps, this is untenable for anyone looking to eke out a living from iPhone apps.
While it is unknown how successful this scheme is, SingTel is upping the ante by gunning after iPhone developers who make apps that allow users to check how much bandwidth they’ve used.
The first developer had an unpleasant experience and pulled his app rather unwillinging it seems, as the only alternative was for him to join SingTel’s App Zone or see his app totally removed from Apple’s store.
Two other similar apps could be in danger of removal. Kudos to iMerlion for the excellent coverage of the local iPhone app scene.
This could be a multi-pronged approach to:
Leverage on the right that SingTel has to prevent apps from using their web services to query for usage data
Compel local app developers to sign up for the SingTel App Zone where SingTel will take a 30% profit
Make it less convenient for users to check their bandwidth used
Some thoughts:
We would be interested to hear SingTel’s official explanation for 1
We would be surprised if SingTel’s official explanation for 1 does not sing to the tune of “unauthorized access” and “cause extra load on our servers”
If the developer goes for 2, it doesn’t mean that 1 should suddenly be allowed again
That is unless 1 is intended to be a method to get the developer to go for 2
3 inconveniences SingTel customers, while making it more likely for users to accidentally exceed their bundled data and get penalized with ridiculous overuse charges
All in all, this seems to make a few developers unhappy that their efforts are wasted, while leaving many more iPhone-trotting SingTel customers without useful usage data apps.
How could this be a win-win for SingTel? When they get the 30% cut.
