Apple has been courting major publishers to usher in its new Daily Newsstand program to cornerstone the online tablet market. In order to really get this off of the ground they formed a direct partnership with News Corp to get a ton of content off of the ground and attract other publishing partners. Although this new Daily Newsstand was supposed to go live January 19th, they had a minor setback via their subscription model. The way their new model works is that it is a separate entity from the iTunes and Apple model, because the company cannot setup reoccurring subscriptions for content. Ahead of this new program, Apple is getting much more stricter with magazines and newspapers that offer paid content via the App Store.
The main reason Apple is getting stricter with publishing companies and content providers is because they often allow the first issue for free and a free application download. Once you download the application and want to subscribe, you do it directly through the company, cutting Apple out of the %30 that they take off of paid downloads. This is one of the main reasons why Apple is creating an autonomous staging ground for all paid news content.
Will the Daily Newsstand see more profit then their existing iTunes and App store iterations? Right now its been a bit of a letdown with publishers not making very much money off of their content. If you look at one of the biggest magazines entering the App store foray “Wired”, a printed subscription costs around $10.00 a year, while its iPad app charges $48.00 per year. Although Wired does offer some exclusive content on their iPad application, its not really enough to warrant the large increase in price.
Apple is disappointed with the way Digital newspapers and magazines has been offered thus far, mainly because they are constantly getting shafted with the %30 take on downloads from free applications.
Although many newspapers and magazines are obviously disappointed with Apple regarding their new emails telling publishers to stop posting free applications and get with their Daily program, the disappointment should be fleeting. Everyone is aware that 2011 is the year of the tablet computer and Apple currently leads the market with by a whooping 75%. Digital Media companies and Publishers know that the digital realm is going to be huge, but no one yet has been able to really captilize on the internet nor the tablet world. The Daily Newsstand may be the solution they are looking for, with the marketing juggernaut of Apple promoting it, it may be the solution to allot of peoples desires to penetrate the tablet realm.
We mentioned earlier that News Corp is firmly behind Apple, and Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs will be doing an event in San Francisco at a major Art Gallery soon to usher in a new digital publishing age. News Corp has also hired 100 independent authors, writers and staff to create new content for this service, which is good its just not regurgitated content from their other publications.
We all hope the Daily Newsstand gets off the ground and creates a ton of new content for our iPad devices, but what about Android? We reported a few days ago that the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Google was also getting into the Publishing realm offering a pure Android Alternative called the Google Newsstand.
via Padgadget
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.