CNN has decided its new iPhone application is worth a price: $1.99. While
that amount may not exactly break the bank, it represents a test of sorts for
media-related mobile applications, the majority of which are free.
In addition to revenue from people downloading the application—which will
feature news stories, photos, video, and customized weather and traffic—CNN
also plans to include in-application advertising.
Similar applications from other news organizations, such as USA Today, the
New York Times, NPR News and the Wall Street Journal, are currently free.
However, the Wall Street Journal previously announced that it intends to charge
$2.00 per week for a mobile-device-only subscription starting in October.
KC Estenson, general manager for CNN.com, suggested to the Associated Press
that the company could afford to charge for its iPhone App based on the caliber
of its content, saying, "It really depends on the quality and nature of
what you're putting into the market."
Earlier in 2009, the Associated Press tried charging $2.99 for a BlackBerry
application, an effort that backfired as, according to the news outfit, the
download rate dipped by more than 90 percent from when the application was
free. After removing the charge, the Associated Press saw its level of
downloads spike.
On Sept. 28, Apple
announced that about 2 billion iPhone Apps had been downloaded from the App
Store, which now features over 85,000 applications. In an accompanying news
release, CEO Steve Jobs said more than a
half-million applications had been downloaded "this quarter alone,"
but the company declined to say how many of the downloaded applications were
free.
The
App Store passed the 1-billion-downloads mark in April, an event that Apple
marked with much publicity and a contest. The store's success has led other
players in the mobile market, including Microsoft and Research In Motion, to
attempt their own application stores to feed their respective mobile operating
systems.
However, rival companies face something of a battle to reach Apple's
numbers. For example, Palm's App Catalog, for the WebOS mobile operating system
running on the Palm Pre smartphone, achieved its millionth download on June 24.
Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
