The Daily's Apple-Only Days Are Numbered: Android Coming This Spring

Rupert Murdoch leaned heavily on Apple to launch the Daily, and for now the iPad is the only place you can read News Corp.’s new digital newspaper.

But that exclusivity will end in a few months: Sources tell me The Daily is prepping for an Android tablet launch in the second quarter of this year.

Murdoch and News Corp. (which also owns this Web site) have been clear that they always planned on getting the Daily on as many tablets as possible, so the move isn’t a huge shock.

But I’m still a bit surprised to see the move to Google come this early, given the emphasis that News Corp. had placed on its Apple relationship prior to launch earlier this month.

The Daily has always been a News Corp. project, not an Apple/News Corp. partnership, but Murdoch’s team has gotten plenty of technical assistance from Apple, and this was the first publication to use Apple’s new subscription service. Most telling is that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was initially scheduled to show up at The Daily’s launch event to bless the publication himself; he eventually ended up sending Apple content boss Eddy Cue instead.

That’s the same event where Murdoch said The Daily would show up on non-Apple devices eventually, but that “we think last year, this year, and next year will belong to the iPad.”

News Corp. declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Apple is still paying close attention to The Daily. Sources say that last week it summoned the publication’s technology team from New York to Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters to go over the app’s “stability issues”–pokey load times, crashes, etc.

But those bugs (and plenty of criticism from media critics) don’t seem to have deterred people from trying the app: I’m told that downloads are ahead of News Corp.’s plan (this is net of the re-downloads that the publication asked users to go through after launch). We’ll see what happens this week, as the Daily’s free trial period comes to an end.

Anonymous

Peter, until they can make it work nicely then it’s days are numbered full stop. Laggy, horrible launch. Did no one bother to test it?

“But I’m still a bit surprised to see the move to Google come this early, given the emphasis that News Corp. had placed on its Apple relationship prior to launch earlier this month.”
Don’t you think Google may have actually been badgering them for something to release with the tablets. They are hitting tomorrow and there is virtually no software. Good job they have widgets it will give those customer who buy one something to play with…
Anonymous

OK, wow I never thought about it quite like that before. Makes sense.

http://www.privacy-resources.at.tc
Anonymous

“But I’m still a bit surprised to see the move to Google come this early, given the emphasis that News Corp. had placed on its Apple relationship prior to launch earlier this month.”

Obviously you didn’t see The Daily superbowl commercial which didn’t mention Apple at all (though it did show an iPad as the device in use).
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/ PKafka

Nope. I saw it. And wrote about it. And linked to that story in the piece above. But here it is again: “http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20110206/news-corp-s-first-daily-ad-is-missing-one-word-and-it-begins-with-i/”.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Mills/1099638671 Tony Mills

Any developers have an idea of about how much of the code is reusable? The UI framework will be different, but what about the code that does the heavy lifting, moving data, making connections etc? Is it a total re-write?
http://www.marketingtactics.com/ davebarnes

The Daily is junk.
Vapid junk.
http://ximagin.co/thecw/ The CW

Coming this spring for Android? Which screen sizes? Which form factors? Which version of Android?

Fragmentation, she is a cold mistress.
IceBeam

The Daily? For the Android? I am so happy i could weep.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7PSYIBYSL3IERNYK7I5R5KXBHI Ryan

Google’s going to feel the pain this spring. Why?

1) the Verizon iPhone; steal some 20 to 40% of sales;
2) iPAD doesn’t have the one carrier limitations that the iPhone had; don’t expect Android tablets to take off;
3) Android fragmentation; forked OS- bad for Android phone users expecting seamless integration;
4) Apple’s explosive growth in China while Google zeroes on revenue;
5) Android users waiting months for upgrades that never come; just overall chaos;
6) Cheap manufacturers of tablet like devices will make consumers weary of going with an Android tablet altogether!
Anonymous

Indeed, fragmentation is why you can’t get The Daily on devices with different form factors, screen size, like iPhone, iPod, Apple TV.
http://space.zerosumgames.net Conflict of Interests

Haha. simple spilt of demographic-people who can, or know someone who can put their phone on a custom rom. Or people who get a new phone ever 2 years that looks the nicest, and miss their RAZR.
I would rather googles android team push the boundaries with each release, while hardware partners slowly start to slot into the shared OS design ethic, than they spent half their time trying to get some Iphone 3gs still involved with the latest release.

Of course, if you just can’t afford the price of constant improvement, I understand, and almost feel sympathy for your pent up aggression/inadequatcy.

The Daily's Apple-Only Days Are Numbered: Android Coming This Spring

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