Apple is absolutely brilliant. If the iPhone isn’t the majority of the smartphone market (which seems likely given the growth and spread of Android) then no one can ever claim Apple of monopolistic behavior like this:

“ We have learned that when Amazon first submitted its Kindle application for the iPhone to Apple, Amazon included its own payment system within the app, so customers could just pay for e-books and download them right in the app.

When Apple spotted the payment system, it told Amazon to get rid of it, according to a source familiar with Amazon’s operations.

Why? It’s a rule Apple smartly instituted at the App Store’s beginning, forbidding third-party e-commerce of digital goods within apps.

That is, it’s okay to use an iPhone app to buy physical goods — as you can in Amazon’s main iPhone app, or the Fandango app, etc. And developers are welcome to use Apple’s in-app purchasing system — and give a 30% cut of revenue to Apple — to sell digital goods within apps.

But Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other vendors are prohibited from using their own e-commerce systems within apps for virtual goods. Thus the trip to the Safari browser to buy books.

It’s obviously a rule Apple itself is allowed to break — it’s Apple’s iPhone, and it can do whatever it wants, as we’ve seen recently with Apple’s recent raids on thousands of sexy apps. But it does put competitors like Amazon on uneven footing.”