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Apple iPad users will soon have a few more reading options. According to Bloomberg, Time is planning to offer iPad readers subscription services for its popular magazine titles.
“It’ll probably be June before we’re able to get it up and running for subscriptions,” Time CEO Ann S. Moore told Bloomberg. “The iPad doesn’t allow me to do that right now. It’s only a newsstand.”
Time owns 21 magazine titles in the United States, including Time, InStyle, People and Real Simple, as well as international brands such as Fortune and Wallpaper. Also under its umbrella are 25 U.S. Websites, including EW.com and CNNMoney.com.
Beginning with Entertainment Weekly and People, Bloomberg reported April 9, Time will begin adding one magazine title a month to the iPad app store. With a commitment to purchase a certain number of issues, Moore said, customers should expect a discount.
“We’re thrilled with the iPad because it’s really putting pressure on everybody to get into a color world,” Moore told Bloomberg. “I couldn’t convince Amazon to do it alone.”
The Apple iPad went on sale April 3, and Apple did swift business, selling 300,000 units that day-including preorders. By April 8, that figure had jumped to 450,000.
Despite its success, the iPad is not without its flaws, primary among which is its deliberate lack of Flash technology. New York Times tech reviewer David Pogue, in his review of the iPad, complained that “thousands of Websites show up with empty white squares on the iPad-places where videos or animations are supposed to play.”
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has called Flash a “CPU hog” and an old technology and has worked to persuade organizations, such as the Wall Street Journal, to instead use a different video compression standard.
The Associated Press and publishing giant Conde Nast-which offers titles such as The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired and Glamour-have both committed to creating iPad-friendly content.
Looking to acquire still more content for iPad customers, Jobs is also said to be at work negotiating with networks to deliver television shows to the iPad store, as well as with book publishers to bring additional titles into its iBookstore.
While early estimates for iPad sales began at 1 million to 2 million units, analysis firms have since upped their figures. On March 3, Broadpoint AmTech, which originally estimated sales of 2.2 million units by year’s end, raised its guess to a conservative 4 million units.
“If the device lives up to its potential,” Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall added, “actual unit shipments could approach 7 million-plus units.”