It's not like there aren't 200000 other free online outlets....
This is incorrect. News is a VERY popular app.
You're correct that there are many other individual units offering news, but nobody is aggregating and customizing a multi-source news package anywhere near as well as News does. I'm constantly amazed when I meet new Apple people and tell them about News and *they already know and love it.*
But if you've got a source for your claim, please point me to it.
As for News+, I'm kind of the target audience for this since I enjoy reading many of the magazines on the list and consider it a steal compared to actually subscribing to more than two paper or digital magazines, but ... at this point in my life I just don't have the time to do a lot of long-form reading, so I've given it a pass so far.
As for News+, I'm kind of the target audience for this since I enjoy reading many of the magazines on the list and consider it a steal compared to actually subscribing to more than two paper or digital magazines, but ... at this point in my life I just don't have the time to do a lot of long-form reading, so I've given it a pass so far.
Reading the article, I don’t think there is enough reliable information to say how many subscribers there are. We have the usual “people familiar with the matter” which means nothing, and that’s about it.
I like the app, but there’s not enough content to make it worthwhile for me, but if they get more publishers on board then I’ll take another look.
When the presentation was made about Bews+. The presenter, I forget which one it was, it could have been Williams, made the error of saying there were 3,000 magazines on board. That got me pretty excited. Then he corrected his error, and said 300, wow, what a letdown. Everyone in the audience felt it.
300 seems like a lot, but it’s really just a small segment. I don’t know what the number is today. I’ve subscribed, and generally, I’m happy, but I subscribe to a lot of magazines, and several newspapers (including websites for which I pay an annual fee.) some of those are in News+. But most are not. I haven’t discontinued any subs yet, because I don’t know how this is going to work out.
Apple is likely happy with News and News+ given the amount of resources they have put into it, and the amount of publishers they have signed up.
It’s biggest problem has already been identified by many commenters - lack of newspaper content.
Apple should change their strategy. They need to offer more local content. I subscribe to my local paper, but the outsourced digital presentation is horrible, so much so where I may be cancelling. Local content from small local newspapers is where Apple could really improve the experience for readers and help publishers at the same time. Most of these papers still focus on the hard copies of their product anyway, otherwise they would be providing a better experience.
While it may be easier to take meetings with the large publishers, they are also in a better negotiating position, and are much more “stubborn” in their digital business models than the smaller outlets.
Comments
You're correct that there are many other individual units offering news, but nobody is aggregating and customizing a multi-source news package anywhere near as well as News does. I'm constantly amazed when I meet new Apple people and tell them about News and *they already know and love it.*
But if you've got a source for your claim, please point me to it.
300 seems like a lot, but it’s really just a small segment. I don’t know what the number is today. I’ve subscribed, and generally, I’m happy, but I subscribe to a lot of magazines, and several newspapers (including websites for which I pay an annual fee.) some of those are in News+. But most are not. I haven’t discontinued any subs yet, because I don’t know how this is going to work out.
Apple should change their strategy. They need to offer more local content. I subscribe to my local paper, but the outsourced digital presentation is horrible, so much so where I may be cancelling. Local content from small local newspapers is where Apple could really improve the experience for readers and help publishers at the same time. Most of these papers still focus on the hard copies of their product anyway, otherwise they would be providing a better experience.
While it may be easier to take meetings with the large publishers, they are also in a better negotiating position, and are much more “stubborn” in their digital business models than the smaller outlets.