Could the usually inflexible Apple be showing some wiggle room on the troublesome issue of iPad-based magazine subscriptions? Time Inc. – which publishes Fortune, Time and Sports Illustrated – has worked out a deal to provide a free iPad app to its print subscribers. Until now, Apple has required both subscribers and non-subscribers to pay separately for the iPad version.
The deal follows a number of meetings between Time’s lawyers and Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet services, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The deal “is a sign the two sides are moving closer,” the Journal writes.
For some time, publishers have balked at Apple’s requirement of a 30 percent cut on sales and making forwarding of iPad subscriber info opt-in. Additionally, the requirement that iPad owners pay for individual issues ran contrary to the usual subscription price model used by many weekly and monthly publications. Although some – such as the New York Times and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., have agreed to Apple’s policy, others have chafed at the lack of subscription information exchanges. The agreement with Time, as one of the largest publishers, may mark an important turning-point in this tug-of-war.
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.
8 responses to “Time Cuts iPad Suscription Deal with Apple”
It’s about …TIME !
Working out a deal is good for both Apple and the publishing industry contributors. It is important to work towards win-win. Then we all win.
I’m fairly sure that that exclusion was reversed when they started the required in app option if you want to sell outside the app. With the caveat that the print/digital couldn’t be a lower price than the in app digital only.
Typo in the title, BTW.