Today traditional print publishers are practically in a similar situation as music labels were five years ago, when they understood clearly that their clients can get all creative work through the Internet.
Apple offers an alternative for print publishers; this is new business model in iTunes App Store which is based on the model that has worked successfully for music labels as well as television and movie studios.
Though, Apple’s print partners are overcautious of everything concerning control both over sales and promotion of content within iTunes and control over information about content which is mainly bought and prices of this content.
Of course with the only mobile software store providing tight integration across tablet, smartphone and music player products, Apple’s App Store will be hard to compete with hardware and software platform vendors to challenge, and very expensive for content producers to attempt to replicate, but publishers are definitely interested in iPad as in platform for soft copies of the press distribution.
Information about popular publication “Wired” which is going to gladden tablet users this summer became the first beacon. Publishing giant Conde Nast has published the list of editions which are planned to be issued for iPad, it contains the following publications: “GQ”, “Vanity Fair”, “Glamour” and “The New Yorker”. Editorial Director of publishing house Thomas J. Wallace informed that release of these magazines for iPad is uppermost oriented to platform testing, price making and perfection of the process of cooperation with advertisers.
World-known information agency The Associated Press is developing an iPad app that provides subscription access to news reports on the Web. It plans to sell news on Apple’s iPad via subscription service.
The AP wants to help the newspapers it collaborates with to roll out electronic editions of their publications without each paper having to develop its own digital strategy in Web access and mobile applications, as papers often come short of the resources and expertise to do on their own.
The decision to create paid subscription access to wire service news is based on a business model initiated by such newspapers as the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, which both provide premium access to news to their paying subscribers both on the web and via native iPhone apps.
Reuters and the New York Times are also going to create paid access to their Web server over the next year. They are expected to become principal rivals of The Associated Press.
Well, this is great opportunity to reinvigorate business models and our journalism. All this is supposed to be liked by readers as it is so comfortable to have your morning coffee with morning information in your iPad. So, paraphrasing well-known proverb we can say that both the readers have eaten much and the trees have not been touched. Duck-squeezers should be happy 