모바일 컨텐츠 이야기


애플의 IAP 정책 강화와 카카오톡


IAP 정책을 강화하는 애플

올해 초부터 애플은 앱스토어를 통해 판매되는 앱의 내부 결제(IAP, In App Purchase)에 대해 외부 결제 방식을 금지하는 정책을 지속적으로 강화하고 있다. 올 상반기에만 해당 규정을 2회 수정을 하면서 서비스 사업자들을 압박하고 있는 것이다. 이는 앱스토어 내에서 발생하는 모든 수익의 30%를 애플이 차지하겠다는 의지이다.

사용자 삽입 이미지

IAP 정책 강화로 인해 지난 7월 킨들을 비롯한 주요 온라인 서점들의 iOS 앱에서 외부 링크와 연결되는 자체 결제 버튼을 삭제하였다. 페이스북도 애플과의 갈등이 있었던 것으로 알려졌다. 아이패드용 페이스북앱이 늦게 출시된 것은 페이스북의 '크레딧'의 사용여부 때문이라고 한다.


국내 사업자들에게도 직격탄

IAP 정책 강화는 국내에서 일반화되고 있는 휴대폰 소액 결제와 바코드 결제 등과 같은 새로운 결제 방식을 더 이상 사용하지 못한다는 것을 의미한다. 국내 모바일 결제사업자인 모빌리언스의 엠틱(M-Tic), 다날의 바통 등은 바코드를 통해 휴대폰 요금 후불 결제가 되는 솔루션을 제공 중에 있다. 이들 사업자들은 언제 애플 앱스토어에서 퇴출될지 알 수가 없다.

사용자 삽입 이미지

최근 신규 업데이트를 한 카카오톡은 휴대폰 결제 방식을 빼고서야 앱스토어 등록 승인을 얻어낼 수 있었다. 카카오톡은 KT와 제휴를 통해 이용자들끼리 선물할 수 있는 기프티쇼를 제공해 왔다. 기프티쇼는 카카오톡의 유일한 수익모델이었는데 휴대폰 결제 방식을 사용한다.


부분 유료화 시장이 중요해지는 것을 의미

사용자 삽입 이미지

애플은 이전까지는 앱 판매 수익의 30%만 차지하고 광고나 부분 유료화에 대해서는 관여하지 않았다. IAP 정책을 강화한 배경에는 앱을 무료로 등록하고 부분 유료화(Freemium 또는 In App Purchase)를 통해 수익을 올리는 경우가 증가했기 때문이다.

사용자 삽입 이미지

앱스토어 안의 유료 App 평균 가격은 약 $1.44 정도로 알려져 있다. 반면에 Flurry의 조사에 따르면 사용자들이 한번 App내 결제를 할때 평균 $14 정도를 지출하는 것으로 알려져 부분 유료화가 App 판매의 약 10배 정도의 수익을 얻을 수 있다. 상황이 이렇다 보니 부분 유료화를 도입하는 App들이 급증하고 있다. 앱스토어의 경우 부분 유료화를 통해 수익을 만들어내는 무료앱이 10년 6월 14%에서 10년 12월 34%로 빠르게 증가하고 있다.

게임 내 아이템 판매와 e-Book, 음악, 영화 컨텐츠를 판매하는 것이 대표적인 사례이다. 앱스토어의 주요 수익원이 앱판매에서 부분 유료화로 이동하면서 IAP를 통한 30%의 수익을 요구하고 있는 것이다. 애플은 향후 부분 유료화 시장이 더욱 커질 것으로 예상하고 장기적인 BM 보호를 위해 관련한 특허를 미국특허청에 출원한 것으로 밝혀졌다.


30%는 너무 높아


지난 8월, 한국인터넷기업협회, 한국무선인터넷산업연합회, 한국음악콘텐츠산업협회, 한국인터넷콘텐츠협회 등이 애플의 일방적인 IAP 정책에 대해 공동 의견서를 작성하여 애플에 반대의견 의사를 전달한 바 있다. 공동 의견서는 대화 채널 개선, 다양한 결제 수단 도입, 합리적인 수익 배분 등을 요구하였다. 콘텐츠 업체들은 수수료를 요구하는 것은 인정하나 수수료 30%가 과도하다는 입장이지만 실제 애플의 입장은 매우 단호하다.

사용자 삽입 이미지

콘텐츠 업체들은 대부분 유통사업자로 원저작자와 수익을 배분하는 것이 일반적인데 이미 수익의 60~70% 정도를 원저작자에게 주고 있다. 수수료 30%를 애플에 주면 현재의 수익 구조에 문제가 생긴다. 남는 수익은 판매금액의 10%이하가 되기 때문이다. 원저작자들과 재계약을 하거나 판매를 포기해야 하는 상황이다.

애플의 명확하지 못한 가이드도 문제이다. 지금까지 애플은 현물 거래(음료수, 과자 등)에 대해서는 IAP 정책을 적용하지 않고 수수료도 받지 않았다. 상반기에 카카오톡을 둘러싸고 동일한 논란이 일어날 때 기프티쇼를 현물로 정의하면서 무마되는 듯 했다. 하지만, 이번 카카오톡 업데이트에서 이슈가 다시 수면 위로 떠 오르면서 애플이 불명확한 IAP 정책이 문제가 있다는 비판이 제기되고 있다.


당장 다른 대안이 없어

애플은 플랫폼 사업자로서 정당한 수수료라고 판단하고 있는 상황이기 때문에 현재의 IAP 정책이 단기간에 완화되는 것은 힘들 것으로 보인다. 콘텐츠 업체들은 불만이 많지만 대안이 없기 때문에 애플의 정책을 수용할 수 밖에 없는 상황이다. Android Market은 아직 마케팅의 채널이나 저작권 보호 측면에서 상대적으로 훨씬 취약하기 때문이다.

아이템을 판매하는 형태의 Game 제작사는 수익율이 떨어지는 것을 제외하면 큰 변화는 없을 것으로 보인다. 저작권료에 대한 수익 배분율을 재조정하지 못한 일부 콘텐츠 사업자나 외부 결제 서비스업체들은 애플 앱스토어 마켓은 포기해야 하는 상황이 발생할 것이다. 전자책, 영화, 음악과 같은 단순 콘텐츠 판매는 유통업체를 거치지 않고 저작권자가 직접 앱스토어에 등록할 것이며 이들을 위한 저가의 대행업체나 솔루션들이 더욱 발전할 수도 있을 것이다.
2011/10/13 08:11 2011/10/13 08:11
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  1. 개골 2011/10/13 09:03 PERM. MOD/DEL REPLY

    저가의 대행업체 많이 달려들 것 같아요..!

  2. Kim choong sik 2011/10/16 21:24 PERM. MOD/DEL REPLY

    내용 중 비즈니스 인사이더 자료 (제프리 파이퍼 소속 애널리스트가 7월 언급 했던)에서 card company의 수수료가 평균 16%로 되어 있는 것은 애플 앱스토어에서 서비스 중인 대부분의 컨텐츠 paid 단가가 0.99$~1.44$이기 때문입니다. 보통, 0.99$짜리 transaction을 하게 되면, 해외 card company의 interchange rate을 감안시, 이미 수수료가 10%를 상회하게 되죠. 게다가, chargeback, iTunes 선불 카드 같은 것까지 고려를 하게 되면 애플의 수익도 사실상 평균 13% 수준에 그치게 되어, 현재 표준으로 자리 잡은 30% 수수료 정책에서 한치의 양보도 하지 못하게 되는 셈입니다. 게임쪽이야 원래 애플 in-app billing을 썼으니, 상관 없지만, 문제가 발생된 상거래쪽은 서로간의 입장차가 워낙 크기 때문에, 쉽지는 않을 것 같네요. 애플의 입장도 입장이지만 상거래 시장 포션과 cost structure를 감안하여, 유도리 있는 절충은 필요할 것 같습니다. 올해 애플 앱스토어 gross sales는 30억$(게임20억$)가 넘을 것이고, net profit은 몇천억은 가뿐하므로, 절대 예외 처리 못할 사안은 아니라 생각됩니다.

 

모바일 컨텐츠에서 중요한 인물 50명


ME에서 이번에 모바일 컨텐츠 산업에서 중요한 인물 50명을 발표하였다. 발표된 인물은 아래와 같다.(알파벳순)

Ray Anderson
CEO, Bango

Bango is still innovating in and around the off-portal space, driving small companies into m-commerce with Bango Start and providing mobile advertisers with valuable metrics via Bango Analytics.

Marco Argenti
Just appointed VP of Media at Nokia (previously MD, Dada.net)

Dada was building mobile communities before most others thought about it. It’s now merging social media with music, and has an interesting partnership with Sony BMG. Argenti is also the MEF's global vice-chair.

Greg Ballard
CEO, Glu Mobile

Glu is one of the big three games companies still standing. Ballard and team have had a tough time on the public markets, but Glu commands enough deck space to be a force in the business.

Jim Beddows
Head of content and application partnerships, Microsoft

Microsoft is slowly gathering OS market share – at least in the US. Beddows has a formidable track record with Disney, Bandai Networks and 20th Century Fox. He currently serves as MEF Americas chair too.

Salil Bharava
CEO, Jump Games

With the backing of the giant Reliance corporation, India’s Jump Games was able to pull off a massive deal with Man Utd, and is now opening offices across the world. It’s also on the acquisitions trail – and there are bargains to be had.

Martin Blomkvist
Head of content acquisition and management, Sony Ericsson

Not a great year for Sony Ericsson as a whole, but big things are happening at the content unit. The PlayNow music store has started selling DRM-free tracks and is working with Omnifone on flat-rate music subscription. Blomkvist should be busy through 2009.

Mark Bookman
CEO, MCN

After good results in Japan with the major operators, MCN is now taking its ‘federated search’ concept into global markets. The novel approach, which aggregates results from various search engines, is now being expanded across Asia Pac, Scandinavia, the US and Turkey. MCN also offers an ‘Allwords’ ad bidding system.

Russell Buckley
VP of alliances, AdMob

The public face of AdMob, which serves four billion ads a month across indie WAP sites. He’s moving to a global ambassadorial role soon, which ties in nicely with his work as chair of MMA Global.

Andrew Bud
Executive chairman, Mblox

Bud saw the potential of premium SMS as a billing medium before most – and is now pioneering WAP billing and driving into the US. Recently elected chair of the MEF.

Rio Caraeff,
EVP, UMG eLabs

Universal is the world’s biggest music company, and was first to commit to Nokia’s game changing Comes With Music idea. Caraeff has been at the top of the mobile team since the beginning.

Stanislas Chesnais
CEO, Netsize

Netsize remains a major influence in mobile payments and marketing services – especially in mainland Europe. It is now directly connected to 80 operators in the continent. Its Netsize Guide is an industry bible.

Ron Czerny
CEO, PlayPhone

Czerny has built PlayPhone into a major force in US D2C, and is now one of the most powerful players in the B2B space, thanks to deals with Wal-mart and many others. Now expanding into Europe with Pitch.

Tom Daly
Group manager, strategy and planning, The Coca-Cola Company

One of the brands most committed to supporting mobile through banners, marketing and even advergames. Daly was recently made vice-chair of the MMA.

Javier Pérez Dolset
CEO, Zed

Zed has always done things differently – developing products almost entirely in-house, and moving into community services ahead of most others. It should turn over around $850 million this calendar year, and has a huge credit line with which to keep expanding.

Jay Emmet
General manager, OpenMarket

Amdocs claims to reach 98 per cent of US mobile subscribers, and runs the OpenMarket mobile commerce platform. Emmet joined in August from mBlox.

Venetia Espinoza
Group manager, mobile applications and partner programs, T-Mobile USA

T-Mobile may be the smallest of the major US operators, but Espinoza’s plan to move its portal towards an ‘open’ App Store model could have huge ramifications.

Andrew Gilbert
President, Qualcomm Internet Services

Gilbert moved from a European role to become the figurehead for Qualcomm’s internet services unit and propel the company’s ongoing drive into widgets, mobile TV and content distribution.
 
Gerard Grech
Director of strategy/biz dev, content division, France Telecom

Grech is responsible for a huge range of products and services – especially with France Telecom committed to a triple play strategy. He also chairs MEF EMEA.

Michel Guillemot
CEO, Gameloft

Gameloft has emerged from the consolidation in the games sector to share the top spot with EA. It’s achieved this via a vast distribution and developer resource.

Tim Harrison
Director of marketing, EA Mobile

Fabuously well-connected in mobile gaming, which is hardly surprising since Harrison went from the juggernaut that is Vodafone to the EA behemoth.

Thomas Hesse
President of global digital business, Sony BMG

Another towering figure in digital music, Hesse has presided over intriguing moves such as the JV with Italy’s D2C specialist Dada and the decision to join Nokia’s Comes With Music project.

Barry Houlihan
MD, Mobile Interactive Group

MIG keeps on growing, and is now a serious player in content, participation TV, mobile advertising and even ‘experiential’. Especially well connected with broadcasters, for whom it has all kinds of ideas in development.

Steve Jobs
CEO, Apple

Jobs claims Apple is the world’s third biggest vendor, with 13 million iPhone sales to date. What’s incontestable is the effect the device has had on UI and content retailing.

Sean Kane
Global head of mobile, Bebo

Third behind Facebook and MySpace, but with 45 million youthful users, Bebo is still a big player. It already has numerous carrier deals.

Jay Kim
EVP of APAC, WiderThan

WiderThan created the ringback tone and the successful music rental service Mel-on. Kim has overall control of WiderThan’s music strategy, and has served as a board member of MEF Asia.

Pieter Knook
Director of internet services, Vodafone

Knook was a big money transfer from Microsoft, hired by Voda to design a new services strategy. It’s been a bit quiet since then, but ME understands that Knook is masterminding an audacious new direction for the giant operator.

Marcus Ladwig
COO, Peperonity

Germany’s Peperoni has been beavering away at mobile social networking for years. Its Peperonity network has approximately ten million unique users and half a billion page impressions per month.

KF Lai
CEO, BuzzCity

BuzzCity’s myGamma social network service reaches 2.7 million users in 70 countries. Lai has used this as a base upon which to build an off deck ad network, and served 1.7 billion paid impressions in July 2008 alone.

Mitch Lazar
MD of connected life, Yahoo! Europe

Yahoo! has stolen quite a bit of business from the pureplay mobile search companies with its Go and OneSearch suite of services.It has also become a force in advertising. Lazar is a Yahoo! veteran with a big new job.

Rob Lewis
CEO, Omnifone

Had the vision to see the potential of subscription music for mobile through a rich media app. More importantly, he had the drive to make it happen. Now MusicStation is established with Vodafone and is going to LG and Sony Ericsson too.

Emma Lloyd

Head of mobile, Sky

Sky has a formidable presence on operator decks, and has put marketing oomph behind products like 24-7 Football. Lloyd can expect a more rewarding time at Sky than she had at the doomed BT Movio.

Brandon Lucas
Senior director of mobile business development, MySpace

The sheer brand power of MySpace has made it the world’s most popular mobile destination after Google. Lucas’s decisions could have a dramatic effect on the whole biz.

Jay McClary
Director, mobile search and advertising, AOL

The US has, probably unsurprisingly, taken to mobile advertising. McClary has quite a role to play, as AOL owns Third Screen Media (possibly biggest mobile banner ad agency in the US).

Rich Miner
Group manager, mobile platforms, Google
 
Originally part of the Danger handset team, which pitched the idea of mobile to Google over two years ago. Now leading the unit behind the G1 Android phone, which has just launched with T-Mobile.

Alistair Mitchell
VP, multimedia integration, RIM

The handsets are getting sexier and there’s a new app store coming in March. Mitchell will use his experience as founder of digital music firm Puretracks to define a media direction for Blackberry.

Mauro Montonaro
CEO, Fox Mobile

After a messy two years since Jamba was bought by News Corp, all eyes are on Montonaro after he was appointed to lead the newly merged Jamba/Fox entity last month.

Tero Ojanperä
EVP, entertainment and communities, Nokia

Ojanperä is the public face of Nokia in the entertainment and social media spaces. He’s made a lot of presentations in the last 18 months, and in 2009 he’ll start to find out whether they were all worth it.

Tony Pearce
CEO, Player X

Under Pearce, the veteran games distributor has stealthily moved into video and also store management. It now runs games retailing for O2 with its 100% portal concept. Opened a testing lab in India too.

Mauro del Rio
Chairman, Buongiorno

Buongiorno’s excellent recent results vindicated its decision to buy iTouch, move into marketing by acquiring Flytxt and invest in ‘mobile 2.0’ services such as Blinko and Bing. The company also has thriving B2B content outsourcing operation with networks worldwide.

Neeraj Roy
CEO, Hungama

Roy has an incontestable claim to be India’s premier mobile content ambassador. Hungama’s impeccable Bollywood connections make it the country’s foremost CP. It also has a flourishing marketing unit. Roy has just been appointed the new chair of MEF Asia.

Gautam Sabharwal
Director, Tanla Mobile

Under Sabharwal, Tanla Mobile began as a billing provider little known outside of India. But it can now offer its customers an array of payment and content services in Europe and North America.

Ralph Simon
Chairman Emeritus, MEF Americas

Still roving the world and getting inordinately excited about interesting new content ideas. Simon received ME’s ‘outstanding achievement’ award in 2007 – and quite right too. He’s the industry’s man in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and even Capitol Hill.

Vince Staybl
CEO, Gofresh

Staybl has thrown down the gauntlet to the web-based social networks with his pureplay service itsmy.com. Constant service innovation has gathered four million users. The next phase is an internal ad market.

Jed Stremel
Director of mobile, Facebook

Incredible year for Facebook. In mobile, the firm claims about ten million active users every month, with numbers doubling every six months. Its apps are increasingly being embedded by operators and handset vendors.

Anssi Vanjoki
Executive VP and general manager of multimedia, Nokia

ME’s ‘outstanding contribution’ award winner in 2008 has masterminded Nokia’s move into content services with Ovi, Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps and N-Gage. He was also behind the very successful Nseries device range, although he failed to convince the trade to call them ‘multimedia computers’. Got quite a year ahead.

Jon von Tetzchner
CEO, Opera Software

Tetzchner and his colleague Geir Ivarsøy conceived Opera when they worked for Telenor Research in 1995. The made-for-mobile browser Opera Mini now has 21 million enthusiastic users worldwide.

Are Traasdahl
CEO, Thumbplay

Norwegian Traasdahl ensured Thumbplay was first into the embryonic US D2C market when it launched in 2005. Thumbplay now has deals with all major labels and s well-established among the US’s top off-portal players.

Lee Williams
Executive director, Symbian Foundation

The second life of Symbian, as an open source organisation, will be led by Williams, who switched from a similar role at Nokia Series 60 in October.

Midori Yuasa
President, Capcom Mobile

Yuasa was appointed in 2005 to head up Capcom’s mobile and interactive division. But her workload escalated when she was tasked to lead a fresh drive into Europe earlier this year.

Yingbo Zhu
VP, China Mobile

Everyone wants to cosy up to China Mobile, with its continent-sized user base. It’s not easy, and the operator remains quite inscrutable. Zhu is its representative in overseas markets.

대부분이 북미나 유럽쪽 CEO인데, WiderThan(왜 와이더댄이라고 소개되었는지 모르겠다. '리얼네트웍스 아시아 퍼시픽'으로 해야 하는게 아닌가?)의 'Jay Kim'이란 분이 당당이 포함되어 있다. 통화연결음(컬러링)과 멜론에서의 업적이 좋은 평가를 받은 듯 하다. 개인적으로 아는 분은 아니지만 축하드린다. 인물들이 소속된 회사를 보면, 어떠한 회사들이 모바일 컨텐츠 시장을 주도하는지 알 수 있을 것이다.

2008/12/04 11:26 2008/12/04 11:26
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