Hulu Plus now lets you subscribe in the app, and Apple gets a cut of the fee

Posted October 4, 201410 yr

Hulu now finally lets users sign up for its paid Hulu Plus service inside its iPhone and iPad app, marking a truce between the media company and Apple over in-app billing. Prior to now, you had to sign up for Hulu Plus from the web and then sign into your premium account in the app, thus getting around Apple's policy of taking a percentage of all in-app billing activity. If you didn't sign up separately, you only had access to some free content in the app.

Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all in-app purchases, even a recurring subscription like the $8 that Hulu charges, so it's somewhat understandable that it wanted to get around that structure. In the end this new move to allow in-app sign-ups for Hulu Plus is likely a net positive — we're guessing that the boost in sign-ups will make up for the $2.40 per user per month it'll be paying Apple.