Time Inc.'s iPad Problem Is Trouble for Every Magazine Publisher

This is missing most of the important points. Apple has built a market place that works and magazine publishers are whingeing because they wish that they could control the sales process (each inventing their own subs plan? like 43 different rules for subscribing to magazines?) and harvest all the private consumer data. Does ANYBODY think that is going to work? Full rebuttal at http://exacteditions.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-i…

Here’s another point of defense for publishers. While technically offering web-based, tablet-optimized, for-pay versions of a magazine is possible, it’s the payment part that is the challenge.

The way I see it, the app store is much less about apps and much more about “store” in that apple has a billing relationship with millions of people who’ve proven a willingness to pay for things.

Adding a payment-based login to your tablet-optimized website is not going to attract many people. Having the option in the app store to “subscribe” at a fixed monthly fee is much more palatable.

Add to this that apple has subscriptions to television series in itunes, and the lack of support within apps is frustrating.

Add to THIS the fact that apple promised in-app subscriptions over a year ago, and that frustration increases.

For every publisher to create a web-based digital subscription billing solution is asking a lot. Similarly for readers, do you really want to go to magazineA.com on your ipad, log in, provide billing info and repeat this process for magazineB.com, magazineC.com etc?

It sounds like Time was looking for a way to bill users on a recurring basis NOT via iTunes, so I’m a little unclear on their mechanism, but I can see a lot of value in apple supporting recurring charges with its existing billing infrastructure on behalf of developers.

Seems to me Apple has said it: “HTML5 provides an open platform for developers to create and distribute whatever they want”.

I wonder if any other publishers are considering that the future of digital magazines is actually HTML5? Apps are great – they've allowed us a very quick entry into the iPad market and they allow for simple, spontaneous purchases. They are found money for those of us who've gotten on the train. But Apple controls and is entitled to control that channel. We accept their rules when we get on board and play by them as long as we travel with them. There are profound limitations but many things in life are tradeoffs.

But we seem mired in a conversation about what could be a very short term solution, given the rapidly changing landscape in a market that is really just a few months old.

Can someone speak to the longer term? Is it possible that a browser-based magazine is the better solution given that it would be cross-platform and better allow for us to have that direct publisher to consumer relationship that many of us have built our business models on?

How is Apple the bad guy in this? Like any successful business, Apple wants what's best for Apple and Time wants what's best for Time. Nobody forced Time into this deal. Time Inc isn't an inexperienced child, naive about how business works. It's each party's responsibility to negotiate and agree to pivotal elements like this and memorialze them in a signed contract before they begin their business partnership, not after it's up and running. Reading Time's complaints, frankly they sound like a bunch of rinky dinks who are now trying to use their media contacts to manipulate a deal they failed to nail down at a more appropriate time and in a more forthright way.

Elle, I hate to break it to you but the last thing that publishers want is the Net. Don’t you get it – anything OPEN can never support censorship – the thing most dear to all status quo seeking publishers. Of course the Net is not THAT open because Google dominates search and can easily divert traffic from pages that contain the bitter truth in whatever dilution. Still the fact that Google can only divert PULL but not kill PUSH means that the sword keeps hanging. The whole tablet-app thing is primarily to force us into limited channels (as in mass media) which are so much easier to manage. TIME just happens to be a high profile case which is being put forth as an example to demonstrate that the App Store / iTunes platform is so powerful that even TIME would need to bow to it. As @baratunde pointed out, the platform is powerful indeed and nearly all publishers would benefit from bowing to it but the insidious aim continues to be to wean those pesky bloggers away from the open Net and onto limited channel tablet platforms with more money than Google Ads then crush them later with bigger publishers or buyouts.

@zato, if you didn’t love commenting, you probably wouldn’t be here. And that is the general case. People have understood the power of dynamic content. So non-interactive content is dead anyway. The only thing such publishers can rely on it the complexity and expense of technology especially with the malware tax thrown in. This is what makes iPad the start of the second way where the one-way publishers have surrendered to dynamic content. iPad promises to be non-intimidating and non-malware ridden. And most importantly iPad promises a robust revenue model. Publishers want money. Paper free tablets managed as well as Apple is would get them more of it than spamming the poor subscribers with junk mail.

Tony_D, rbradbury is right. The reason Android pales in comparison is because it suffers from splintering. Look at other cellphone makers and see how model happy they are. Then wonder how unhappy their accessory makers are. The same is true of smartphone OSes. The key is to have a few models as possible so the aim is to get it right the first time. Android is about 10 times more splintered as iOS, not that the later is not seeing its own splintering first with the iPad and I suspect next with some W100 type folding iPad. This is the reason, Android developers would never be able to make more than 10% of what their apps would make on iOS. Also the 30% / 40% cut would gradually reduce to reeflect the competition though it is unlikely to come below 15% / 20% for apps / ads because no one else has locked their processor (as in A4) to prevent cheap knockoffs.

I agree, the very concept of magazines is in danger. IMO, first there would be a transition from mags to personalities (along with all their ghosts for sure). Next there would be a transition from personalities to life goals because there would be bandwidth crunch. In the first transition, we would fall in love with 500 personalities but soon realize that we are spending all our time on them and have forgotten what we look like in the mirror. That's when we would realize that what matters are the goals we have for ourselves so we would listen only to those who can serve these the best. That's when bandwidth optimization would start forcing long overdue customizations.

We can rest assured that browsers and tablets would co-exist and find their respective niches. What we are trying to figure out is how will it all pan out and will that be fair to all concerned or will the way things pan out be more favorable to only some of the parties involved. I suspect and it is already happenning that the Net would split into two. A more accessible but more censored version and a wilder less censored version. Also tablets would keep getting cheaper (for instance Kindle is down to 139) because their revenue models would become increasingly dependent on services. So the hierarchy would be something like Tablet or Phone / New Net / Old Net. The fact that television can flourish in the age of YouTube is enough proof that entire platforms can be “managed”. Also such discussions are too complex for mere mortals like ourselves but one thing we can rely on – the majority are sheeple and their handholding would never go away.