Apple's content revenue share to shrink - Axel Springer

German publisher Axel Springer AG expects Apple Inc.'s share of the revenue generated when it sells third parties' digital content to decline as more competitors emerge, Chief Executive Mathias Doepfner said Thursday.Amazon.com Inc. charges publishers less for content sold via its Kindle tablet than Apple does through its App Store, Doepfner noted at the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference in Barcelona.

"Imagine what happens if there are four or five players--there will be room for negotiations," he said. Axel Springer has no plans to bypass Apple in distributing content, as U.K. newspaper the Financial Times does.

Springer, which in the first nine months of the year generated more advertising revenue in digital media than print media, has created its own iKiosk, a digital newsstand that will be opened to competitors.

At the conference, the publisher's chief financial officer, Lothar Lanz, said Europe's sovereign debt problems haven't affected Axel Springer's business as of now.

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