Apple vs the rest of the mobile ecosystem, Who is right and who is evil?

For users of iPads who want to read books or other content need to pay attention to recent moves by Amazon in how they changed their Kindle reader. One of the things that stimulated this change was the fact that Amazon didn't want to give Apple a 30% cut of content purchases. So, at some level I think the ecosystem understands that a store should make money off selling applications, but would agree that this is taking it a little too far when you have already sold the application and now want to also collect royalties on content within the application.

If you look at the other mobile stores such as those by Microsoft, they don't have a clear policy in this regard as to whether they will do what is best for the ecosystem vs simply looking out for their own interests. From a developer perspective, this also now means that you will most certainly be confronted with the potential of a new set of APIs at the expense of other mechanisms that may be used for purchasing content. Think about the possibilities of censorship if say the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or even the Drudge Report was forced to fork over dollars simply for accessing content through mobile channels.

The funny thing about this type of policy is this shows a lack of leadership in the marketplace. What should mobile software developers think if a company creates a policy and frequently changes their posture on it? Why can't various mobile App Stores simply have a policy and stick to it...