The iPad has been widely embraced by publishers who think it will stave off the death of print, but the latest forecast is grim: not even the “magical” iPad can save newspapers from the grave.
Revenue from digital magazines will skyrocket over the next few years, leaping to $611 million by 2015, up dramatically from last year’s $4 million, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Newspapers, seeking a way to salvage declining readership, apparently won’t receive a similar boost from digital versions. News delivered by tablet by 2015 will add just $331 million in revenue for the industry, only double the $150 million earned from digital sales in 2010, according to a Forbes report.
In May, Forbes reported magazine publishers are discovering many of their worries about offering digital subscriptions were “unfounded.” The worry was that Apple’s requirement that readers “opt-in” to releasing subscription data would hamper sales. However, more and more magazines are coming on board with Apple after learning most readers are happy to reveal personal data in return for subscription deals.
Even with digital subscription deals inked, adding iPad owners as readers won’t stem the tide of red ink for newspapers. “A gain of $181 million won’t be nearly enough to cancel out the decline in newspapers’ print circulation revenues, which will are forecast to fall from $10.2 billion in 2010 to $9.5 billion in 2015,” Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici writes. By comparison, the magazine industry will see an increase of $162 million from added subscription revenues.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
9 responses to “Wall Street: iPad Won’t Save Newspapers”
The format of these iPad digital editions is poor and Apple is doing little to help. A new folder in iOS5 skinned like a bookshelf with background downloads is not going to cut it. With the majority of these iPad products you can’t:
– Search for articles in your current issue, let alone all the issues covered by your subscription. You can’t search for a specific issue downloaded on your iPad from Spotlight like you can a song or a movie.
– Copy and Paste text for references and quotations.
– Easily share / recommend an article to a friend.
– I haven’t seen any that tag articles, so you can find articles based on the topic you are interested in.
– Since the magazines are in-app purchases they are not hosted by Apple so the experience between downloading issues between each app is inconsistent.
– Many of the apps are slow and have a tendency to crash. Few stream articles, so you have to wait for the whole issue to download before you can start reading.
– The digital editions are rarely cheaper than the paper editions.
The quality of the content is just not superior enough to justify both the cost and the inferior format. Especially with features like Safari’s “Reader” where I can now read the free web article in a clean format without losing all the benefits of a web page, why would I want a big dump slow app?
Newspapers began their death slide when editorializing the news on the front page became obvious in the early 90s. Slanted “news” was kept afloat by advertisement dollars where money was pumped into papers out of habit rather than realizing returns. Craigslist destroyed that gravy train forcing papers to rely on content to remain viable.
Whatever the format, lack of objective content is what destroyed newspapers and is their undoing. They have no one to blame but themselves.
Things should change before someone like Facebook starts implementing and tagging friends with articles some day.. as a consumer.. yeah its awesome..
Things should change before someone like Facebook starts implementing and tagging friends with articles some day.. as a consumer.. yeah its awesome..
Totally agree with you on magazines, and I’m still a hardcore print reader as a result. When it comes to newspapers, all I can say is, give me ANYTHING but the ultra-clunky ink rag that is the printed newspaper. They blacken your hands, they require tiresome folding and unfolding, and even the cheap paper stock has a lousy feel. Good riddance! I’ve been a heavy user of online news sites for more than a decade now, partly because of the mediocre print experience and more so because news is constantly breaking, so last night’s paper is already, well, no longer news. It’s unfortunate for once-proud publishing institutions, but I personally think of the newspaper in the same obsolescent category as the telegraph. Magazines, though, for the most part (at least the ones I frequent), aren’t really a “news” medium IMHO. Obviously some are newsy, but not like their daily newsprint counterparts. I turn to magazines for unique, specialized content and in-depth commentary that doesn’t rely on the events of the hour for substance. Mags aren’t about scoops, but rather insight — which means they aren’t easily replaced by the countless syndicated online outlets. Newspapers face a grim future, and there’s probably no going back, but magazines should do just fine once they figure out a viable, sustainable app/HTML5 format that meets the needs of active readers. It might be a while before we get there, but I suspect mags will be OK in the long run.