During a call discussing News Corp’s latest financial results, Rupert Murdoch told investors that the Wall Street Journal has been extremely successful on the iPad, and it’s far more profitable for them than similar content on the Kindle, at least on a per subscriber basis.
According to Murdoch, about 64,000 people are subscribing to the Wall Street Journal on the iPad at the price of $18 a month, but unlike on the Kindle, News Corp. doesn’t need to split the revenue: almost all of the $18 collected from each customer goes straight to their coffers.
For me, the most amazing aspect of this is that the web-only subscription to the Wall Street Journal is $9 a month. The iPad version costs twice as much. Now that the iPad 3G is widely available in the United States, I can’t help but think that Murdoch’s WSJ iPad readers are going to start transitioning to Mobile Safari for their subscription.
