Apple App Store to embrace ads, app subscriptions

Apple's app store's about to change. For the developers the subscription model's about to get a shakeup. Currently, Apple takes a 30% cut of subscriptions sold as in-app purchases. A report from The Verge says that if a developer can hang on to a subscriber for more than one year. Apple will take only a 15% cut from them on. The new split will start on June 13th. Also all kinds of apps will be able to sell subscriptions. Right now, only certain types of apps, like news or audio streaming apps could sell subscriptions. Apple will also start showing ads in the app store starting as a beta on Monday June 13th. When you search you'll see an ad at the top of the search results The added self will show a blue background, with a blue add button under the title of the app to distinguish it from other results. Apple claims that it will not create search profiles of users. Data tracking will also be an opt out option. So what does this mean for you if you're not a developer? Well, you're gonna see ads and search. Also expect to see subscription fees for games. It's a huge revenue generator for developers. Maybe there's even the off chance that Amazon will bring it's Prime service to Apple TV, since Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has famously said, he wants acceptable business terms to bring Amazon's video player to any platform. There's also news from Recode, that says Google's Android subscription model will change as well Google will take a 15% cut of subscription purchases instead of 30% like it does now. However, developers would not need to hold on to the subscribers for a year. The 85-15 split would happen when the new policy is in place. Google has not officially introduced this change. That's it for this tech news update. I'm Iyaz Zaktar. And you can stay on top of the biggest stories at cnet.com/update.