Apple and News Corp are reportedly prepping an iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, for launch in the near future. It could change the dynamics of the e-reader market.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and News Corp magnate Rupert Murdoch
are planning on launching a tablet-only newspaper, according to online reports.
Should such a development prove true, it could further alter the dynamics of a
publishing world already in flux thanks to e-readers and other electronic
media.
Murdoch himself seemed to confirm many of the e-newspaper's
details in a Nov. 9 interview with
The
Australian Financial Review. "I'm starting a paper in six weeks," Murdoch
reportedly said. "It will only be seen on tablets. It will only employ
journalists-and maybe eight to 10 technicians."
According to Murdoch, the paper will require a circulation
of around 800,000 readers paying $1 per week-a number he implied was well
within grasp. "By the end of next year there will be 30 to 40 million iPads. I
believe every single person will eventually have one, even children."
He plans on calling this new publication The Daily:
"We wanted to call it the Daily Planet but DC comics [owners of the
Superman copyright) were not amused."
David
Carr at The New York Times suggests News Corp has invested some $30
million in the venture. However, he also says the final product will differ
from current online news content: "At a time when the ecosystem of news is
driven by links, The Daily will have no inbound links from other sites, and
nothing outbound either." Updates will apparently be slower than for a
traditional news Website.
Meanwhile, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball seems to
think Apple and News Corp will schedule their announcement for early December.
"The date I've heard is Dec. 9, but that's a Thursday, which would be
somewhat unusual for an Apple press event," he wrote in a Nov. 22 posting. "My guess
is that they're telling people Dec. 9 but it might slip back to Tuesday or
Wednesday the week after."
Reports indicate that the Apple-News Corp collaboration has
been underway for months, and that the resulting product will be tablet-only.
Periodicals such as newspapers and magazines remain a prime
focus of e-readers and tablets, as they offer a source of prime revenue for
both publishing companies and device manufacturers such as Apple and
Amazon.com.
Barnes
& Noble is marketing its new, Android-powered Nook Color as an ideal way
for reading image-intensive magazines such as Rolling Stone, while the Kindle's relationship with newspapers such as The New York Times
extends
back several quarters.
Both Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com offer their e-reader
software for a variety of PCs and mobile devices, in a bid to increase the size
of their ecosystem. All companies in the e-reader market face tough competition
from the iPad, which includes an e-reader application in addition to
device-specific content.
Even backed by the iPad and its enormous sales, can The
Daily
succeed? Murdoch is known for pouring millions into business ventures
until they begin to seize respectable market share. Then again, his company
also has its share of online disasters: MySpace, which News Corp once purchased
for a cool half-billion,
recently
unveiled a deal to pull Facebook profile content onto the users' profile pages-the
social-networking equivalent of waving surrender's white flag.
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