No I mean the shop front for the app store in the first place. As far as I can tell the publisher is allowed to go make their own handsets, design their own app store and start up their own distribution if they want. Like Amazon are trying. They don't have to use Apple's app store at all if they don't want.
The issue is with subscriptions not the app store. Apple don't have to do a thing for the subscription but accept payments and take their 30% cut. An app however has hosting costs, bandwidth costs and QA costs for Apple. None of those apply to subscription content as its all handled by the publisher.