Tablets and News
The tablet revolution: 11% of U.S. adults own a tablet, 53% get news on their tablet every day; http://eicker.at/TabletsNews
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Gerrit Eicker
MagAppZine
Digital publishing with MagAppZine: Give us 15 minutes [and a PDF]. We’ll give you an [iPad] app; http://eicker.at/MagAppZine
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Gerrit Eicker
MagAppZine: “…is a New York, NY based company founded in 2010 by former Apple employees who teamed up with an Adobe engineer to create the ultimate digital publishing tool. – MagAppZine allows publishers to create branded apps for their publications and distribute them to the world via mobile devices like the iPad, opening up their business to a whole new audience while maintaining a lower overhead. – The company’s slogan, Publishing Gone Digital, reflects MagAppZine’s mission: to give all publications the opportunity to distribute their content in the most modern way without spending an exorbitant amount of time and money.”
MagAppZine: “The creation of your branded MagApp and deployment onto the Apple App Store [starts at $2,994].”
O’Reilly: “Is the platform targeted toward a specific kind of publisher? Paul Canetti [founder]: ‘Clearly the name brings in magazines first and foremost, but the tool itself is really applicable to all sorts of publications. Anything that can be a PDF is fair game. I have a lot of conversations with small book publishers looking to create a bookstore app on a particular topic or as a branding tool for the publisher or a specific author. It is my philosophy that you should be everywhere your readers potentially are, so when someone searches for you on the App Store, it’s you that they find.’ – How can book publishers use the platform? Canetti: ‘The bookstore app is really cool, and chunking up books into collections fits nicely under the umbrella of the app. I’m also excited to start seeing sub-divisions of books – selling chapter by chapter – or using the subscription functionality to have a sort of book club app or a series where new content is being released regularly. … We’re also rolling out a new tiered monthly pricing structure that has plans starting at $99 a month.‘”
RWW: “It’s a white label, DIY app-publishing platform that is limited to PDF uploads, website viewing in an in-app browser and in-app sales of multiple issues of any publication. It looks really well thought out, simple and accessible. The price is about to drop substantially, too with the Fall release of the 2.0 version of the service. … Can PDF-type content do well in an app store context? I’m not sure, but if I had print-style content to distribute I think I would give this service a shot. It looks much nicer, frankly, than magazine reading app platforms like Zinio or HP’s Magcloud (which I love in theory but never use in practice). I want to go directly to the magazines I want to read, not wander around some app store from the app store that’s 75% filled with magazines of questionable quality.”
Gerrit Eicker
Virtual Newsstands
The struggle of magazines at newsstands continues, virtual newsstands offer a bright spot; http://eicker.at/VirtualNewsstands
Gerrit Eicker 10:37 on 26. October 2011 Permalink |
PEJ: “The Tablet Revolution – How people use tablets and what it means for the future of news – Eighteen months after the introduction of the iPad, 11% of U.S. adults now own a tablet computer of some kind. About half (53%) get news on their tablet every day, and they read long articles as well as get headlines. But a majority says they would not be willing to pay for news content on these devices, according to the most detailed study to date of tablet users and how they interact with this new technology. … The survey also finds that three-in-ten tablet news users (defined for this study as the 77% of all tablet users who get news at least weekly) say they now spend more time getting news than they did before they had their tablet. Just 4% say they spend less time while two-thirds (65%) spend about the same amount of time. … Whether people will pay for content, though, still appears to be a challenge, even on the tablet. Just 14% of these tablet news users have paid directly for news content on their tablets. Another 23%, though, have a subscription to a print newspaper or magazine that they say includes digital access. … The study also finds that these early users turn to the internet as their main source for news much more frequently than the public overall, and they have a strong preference for reading and listening to news rather than watching it-again much more than the population overall. Fully 71% of tablet users prefer reading and listening versus 45% of all U.S. adults. … Among the other major findings: The revenue potential for news on the tablet may be limited. Brand is important on the tablet. Substitution is already occurring to large degrees. Incidental news reading is prevalent on the tablet. Those who rely mainly on apps for news, 21% of all tablet news users, represent a kind of power news consumer. Word of mouth is a key component of tablet news sharing. When it comes to ownership, many see the tablet computer as more of a household device to share than as a strictly personal one.”
The Tablet Revolution
RWW: “Interestingly enough, 40% of respondents said they used the Web browser to access to news, compared to 21% who exclusively used apps. Many bigger publishers have made developing native apps a priority, believing that they will be easier to monetize than browser-based content. Indeed, some publications have seen an increase in readership after launching HTML5 Web apps than native applications could deliver. – How the native vs. Web app debate will shake out for brands generally is yet to be determined. For the time being, those that can afford should probably invest in building both. According to Pew’s research, 31% of tablet owners use both native and Web apps to consume news.”
pC: “Either way, there is still the overall problem: only 14 percent of tablet users surveyed have paid for news on their tablets. Companies that combine app or online subscriptions with print subscriptions have been able to attract another 23 percent of tablet users to their products, but there is obviously a long way to go.”
VB: “When it comes specifically to news consumption, the results are a mixed bag for media outlets. Yes, tablet owners love consuming news and they gobble it up on the browser and news applications. But, much like the hordes of regular Internet users, tablet owners don’t want to pay for the news they consume on their iPads and Android tablets. A disappointing 14 percent of tablet owners surveyed have paid for news specifically for the tablet. Among those who haven’t already put money down, 21 percent said they would consider paying $5 a month for news while 10% said they would pay $10 a month for news on the tablet.“