Category: Ipad

paidContent UK: The Apple iPad won't replace the newspaper

4/19/2010

Benedict Evans, a consultant at the Enders Analysis firm, argues in paidContent UK that the Apple iPad doesn't stand to silence the newspaper presses. In short, the prospects for the new device won't generate a viable business model for the paper.

The real question is one of scale, Evans argues. Not enough will be sold, and not enough people will pay for content once they own one, to cover the cost of a newspaper model predicated on the absence of the Internet.

While some have argued that the applications --- and not the subscriptions, per se --- will drive the revenue, Evans suggests the long-term sustainability of the app model shaping consumption is questionable.

"The main impact of the iPad might be to erode further the position of print publications and their websites, by giving all of the web the same portability as a physical newspaper or magazine," Evans writes.

Alan Mutter: How publishers can win with Apple's iPad

4/5/2010

Normally the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog is filled with the dire news of declining newspaper circulation and revenue. But in his latest post, Alan Mutter is sounding a bit of a clarion call to publishers: They can win by using Apple's iPad properly.

For the first time, Mutter says, a device is there to play to the strengths of the print medium's depth of content. Given everyone is starting on equal footing to create applications and functions for the iPad, Mutter believes print publishers can create winning strategies by acting swiftly and decisively.

The strength of print is in its subtle and deep exploration of issues. It is a lean-back medium, a solitary one, and a medium in which drama can be built with words when neither audio nor video is available.

What he advocates (apart from action now) is unclear, but Mutter says it's not feasible simply to migrate content. New functions and depth need to emerge, or else the glaring weakness of print online will be repeated.

What I want in a device, circa 2010

4/3/2010

The iPad made its debut today and is bound to be a game changer. More than 700,000 were sold on day one. That number will float over the million mark Sunday or Monday or Tuesday. Then there will be people who see them in the hands of their friends and must have them. Then there will be their friends. Then there will be businesses that want the device as the resident tool for their employees. Then institutions, governments, and the expansion internationally into other markets. Then the next version.

All good. But maybe not good enough.

I'm still thinking the devices aren't there yet to serve our needs. I have a wishlist, circa 2010, that I don't think are unrealistic. (I recognize I will sound now like Andy Rooney. )

I don't want a backlit screen; I want something that will absorb natural or electric light and reflect electronic ink back to my senses. I am hard-wired for ink on a surface and our children don't yet go to bed reading Harry Potter on a laptop; the sooner we get nearer the experience of ink on paper, the sooner we'll have mass markets for these important devices.

I don't want a reflective screen. I read often in a bright room and don't want a mirror, and I don't want the sunlight in the window behind me to overcome the image in front of me. If nothing else, frost that screen.

I want the Internet on it all the time, just like a battery or an electrical current. I don't want to activate it or launch it. Not anymore. And not when I'm near a wireless router or inside a telecom's footprint. All the time.

I need it to deal with video --- taking it and viewing it --- and for the various stakeholders to deliver. I want a device that will take good video and I will pay very well for feature films, less so for recent releases, even less so for oldies. But I will pay if the device will stream it without glitches. If the producers can't figure that out soon, what happened to the music industry awaits them --- the speedy downloads are coming very, very soon, the last impediment to rampant movie piracy. Enough fighting and dithering.

I want my device to link my creations and preferences through networks. In other words, I want my device to be smart enough to tag everything so the largest number of people consume and share it. In short, a semantic, SEO servant.

I have to keep on top of things and my device should be curating that for me, alerting me when something significant is there to be consumed, and identifying any sudden changes in what others I trust are consuming. I know there is software that might help me do that, but I think that's too much unnecessary work these days. My device should do that for me if I tell it what I need. All the time, not just when I launch a piece of software through the Web.

I want to build trusting relationships and my device can help me find like-interested people and network our associations. But I then want our network to be mined by my device for recommendations and guidance to create a cohort of trusted goods and services. In other words, my device can steer me right.

And I want my device to charge me as I use it, not before I use it, and offer me the newest version as I reach a certain level of wear and tear. In other words, I want a lease-like, built-in obsolescence that will be a virtue and I never want to be stuck with something less-useful than the best device I can exploit.

Do I have a price point for this? Well, let's see, my laptop is worth about $1,500, my smartphone is about $1,000 a year, I pay about $1,500 a year for cable and Internet, and a few hundred more for downloads and a few hundred more on entertainment that could just as easily arrive in my home. I'd replace the entire distribution chain, so there's my price point. Of course, add a couple of these devices so my family can play, too.

The Apple iPad launches, Canada waits again

4/3/2010

The Apple iPad makes its debut in stores in the United States today. Reviews have been largely positive. Applications are ready for launch and an exponentially larger number are in the works. Consumer and publisher expectations are off the charts.

It is tempting to hop in the car, use my Nexus pass to get through the absurdly long border lineups, try to find one this weekend in Bellingham, Blaine, Everett or Seattle, and pay the duty as I return north.

After all, the Wi-Fi version will work the way my iPod Touch works here.

But I think I'm going to hold out for the Wi-Fi/3G version or perhaps the 2.0 iPad (I think it can use a camera like the Macbook Pro). I'll sleep on it.

Still it is getting comical --- or tragi-comical --- that device after device takes longer to travel the short distance to market from a nearby head office (think Seattle and Kindle, or think Silicon Valley and Apple) than to market across that head office's vast country.

We are led to believe the Internet has blurred borders, that we're in a global economy that finds receptive markets with few if any barriers. But it really isn't so --- witness the Web sites that won't let you surf from abroad. The most innovative technological devices (save the BlackBerry, which is from Canada) are oddly enough the ones held back in the most old-fashioned way.

The iPhone, the Chumby (still not here), the Kindle, Google Android and iPad have been hung up for months as our telecommunications firms worked out terms with manufacturers. The iPhone actually went to several non-U.S. countries before Canada. The irony is that Canada is the country with the most broadband Internet penetration.

The iPad is coming to Canada in late April --- shorter than the typically extended delays --- but pricing and carriage plans haven't been announced. What Canadians have found with other devices is that data plans have been anything but flexible and affordable.

Let's hope Apple and the carriers learn from earlier launches (Apple was reportedly upset with pricing of the iPhone plans in Canada). If so it'll be worth the few weeks' wait. But what the country needs is simultaneous release; we're seemingly backwards with it.

TBI Research: The Apple iPad won't save magazines

3/31/2010

The arrival this week of the iPad is being treated in some quarters as the turning point in the industry's search for a palatable business model.

In other words, a model ideal marriage of a device, platform and content.

But TBI Research has punctured the balloon by noting the revenue magazine publishers will derive from their new iPad applications will by no means offset their declines in circulation and advertising revenue from the printed product.

"Even if iPads fly off the shelves, magazines will still realize only a small per cent of their overall revenue," it notes.

Even if there are more than 2.5 million of the devices in circulation, they'll yield only about 10 per cent of the revenue magazines now derive from circulation and advertising, TBI notes.

MediaPost: Apple's iAd, new mobile ad system, takes on Google

3/27/2010

The Apple-Google corporate tussle isn't going to go away. But Apple appears ready to fire another shot across the bow shortly by unfurling a mobile advertising system that tries to take a bite out of Google's preeminence in Web advertising.

MediaPost suggests it might be called "iAd" and will be tied to mobile devices. It follows the Apple acquisition in recent months of Quattro (and Google's acquisition of AdMob). And its implications for the news and information business are profound as they deliver content across the smartphone system.

In this instance the battle line shifts from the devices --- the iPhone and iPad against the Android --- to the content they carry again. Already Apple has found ways to diversify its revenue stream that Google hasn't, but now the battleground will be Madison Avenue.

Wired: New eye-tracking tablets and journalism

3/26/2010

Wired writes on impending technology that detects how you're reading text, how you pause, how you stare, how you might even lose your train of thought, and adjust.

It's called the Observer Effect and technology is emerging to reduce the friction in the reading experience. It can help you if you're puzzled, deal with you if you're stuck, or even eliminate extraneous material if you're skimming.

Wired author Elliot Van Buskirk identifies the iPad as the first possible test of this tech. He notes Apple is involved in software breakthroughs to accommodate reading, an era of Text 2.0.

He concludes the new technology, once released and experienced for some time, could reinvigorate reading.

Alan Mutter of Newsosaur: Are news site users early adopters?

3/23/2010

In his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, industry veteran Alan Mutter examines a new survey from ITZ Belden that suggests there is reason for some optimism among news organizations in the digital age.

In the survey of users of three newspaper sites, users also happened to be significant techies. The survey found a disproportionate number of them happen to own smartphones or intend to buy the impending Apple iPad tablet.

Compared to other surveys, the ITZ Belden one found above-average numbers on intention to own a smartphone if one weren't already owned, too.

Some 30 per cent of news site visitors said they intended to own an iPad. If that were a universal number, and not just a news site visitor number, Apple would be assured a very sustainable future indeed.

Now, three newspaper sites' users do not a survey fully make. But it's clear in this data a connection exists between a news consumer and a desire for top technology. Mutter notes it's necessary for news companies to generate better digital applications to take advantage of the interest.

Seeking Alpha: Apple and newspapers can co-exist

3/16/2010

The routinely strong Seeking Alpha site features a somewhat conciliatory post from media corporate financial advisor on the impending coexistence of the Apple iPad and the newspaper industry.

Dan Ramsden has some tough words for Google. He sees its recent encouragement of the newspaper industry to experiment as self-serving --- the more papers try to do things online, the more Google's search engine technology benefits.

But he makes an interesting choice in where to place the technological bet. While recent media coverage has suggested Google's open-source design of its Android smartphone offers the greatest opportunity for old media to succeed, Ramsden begs to differ.

He is firmly in the Apple camp. It's the technology of choice by consumers, it's the technology company that has figured out (through iTunes and the iPhone) how to exact a premium for content, so it's the technology the newspaper business should focus on serving.

"Newspaper and magazine owners, who are struggling to redefine their business models for a new online and mobile environment, would probably be well served to align themselves with the platform that can offer a revenue model, and a mobile marketplace, and leave the experimentation and iteration stuff to young entrepreneurs and startups that do not yet have a franchise to protect," he writes.

He suggests: "Style, design, quality control, are all characteristics that will do much more to facilitate the popularity of paid content than one more colorful website that may or may not show up at the top of Google’s search results."

Wired's Gadget Lab: Will iPad and Apple control the news?

2/26/2010

Brian Chen explores the technical and ethical issues ahead for journalism as Apple's iPad comes to market. Principally he looks at the gatekeeper role Apple is playing on applications and their content.

He also cites others who worry that Apple will not work to protect press freedoms and will bow to complaints about content.

Given the speed with which applications are emerging, Apple also faces a problem in keeping pace. Chen suggests the iPad and the App Store are not the ideal environment for newspapers and magazines to be reborn.

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