October 19, 2011
Could Apple’s Newsstand spell the demise of iPhone/iPad news apps?
Apple’s new iOS 5 mobile operating system, iOS 5, was just released last week—and while it may increase digital subscriptions, there are also some signs that the company is gaining more power over publishers’ distribution channels and revenue potential…
Apple describes the iOS 5 Newsstand this way: “iOS 5 organizes your magazine and newspaper app subscriptions in Newsstand: a folder that lets you access your favorite publications quickly and easily. There’s also a new place on the App Store just for newspaper and magazine subscriptions. And you can get to it straight from Newsstand. New purchases go directly to your Newsstand folder. Then, as new issues become available, Newsstand automatically updates them in the background—complete with the latest covers.”
This offers digital subscribers a more seamless experience than navigating through a fragmented landscape of news brand-specific apps on their iPhones and iPads. So it’s not too surprising that the earliest results indicate that this approach might be gaining traction with Apple mobile users.
According to PaidContent, Exact Editions (which digitally packages several popular news brands such as The Spectator for purchase over the web and as iOS native apps) says “downloads of freemium sample editions jumped by 14x in just a few days, and some titles’ actual sales have more than doubled.”
Also: “Consumer magazine publisher Future ...has sold more digital editions in the past four days through Apple’s Newsstand than in a normal month.”
If Newsstand becomes popular with consumers, it’s possible that there might be a decline in standalone iPhone and iPad apps created and marketed by publishers through Apple’s App Store.
Standalone news apps may look cool, but cumulatively they’re also a hassle for users who mainly just want access to content, not special interactive features. Users must find an app, download and install it, and remember to use it. That’s a problem, since recent Localytics research found that 26% of apps are only opened once—and only 26% are ever opened more than 11 times.
Right now standalone iPhone and iPad apps are hugely popular with news organizations largely because iOS users have so far been trained to look for an app in the App Store whenever they want access to mobile content or services. But if this key consumer habit changes, and most Apple mobile users start turning to the Newsstand when they want news, there may eventually be little point to developing and maintaining a standalone iOS app that mainly just delivers your free or paid content.
Sonya Quick of the Orange County Register noted on Twitter that the “issues” delivered via the iOS Newsstand are really a kind of app. She suggests: “This would actually be a reason to build issue-based apps.”
The emerging, fast-moving tablet market could further undermine standalone news apps. A new Pew report found that so far getting news is one of the most popular activities for tablet users, and about two thirds of tablet users have installed a news app. Nevertheless, the vast majority of tablet users actually get news via their browsers, not via news apps.
Meanwhile Apple is also flexing its muscle to curb renegade subscription apps.
PaidContent also reports that The Economist has finally caved to Apple on iPad subscriptions.
Originally the U.K. magazine’s iPad app accepted subscription and single-copy payments directly from consumers via “browser jumping” to the web, rather than via iTunes (as Apple began requiring this summer). This strategy flouted Apple’s controversial rules which require publishers to surrender a 30% cut of subscription revenue, as well as total control over subscriber data, to Apple.
But with the iOS 5 release, popular features in the Economist iPad app (sharing, bookmarking and swiping) stopped working. The publisher had to quickly release a new iPad app which complies with Apple’s subscription terms.
There is a penalty: Paying Economist’s subscribers who switch so far are getting much less for their money. PaidContent notes: “The Economist is facing a challenge to migrate readers to a separate app rather than just upgrade their existing old app. When readers do migrate, they apparently will lose their back issues.”
The News for Digital Journalists blog is made possible by a grant to USC Annenberg from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
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