MacDailyNews Note: Not yet available as of April 2, 9:30am EDT.
The TIME app will have all the content of the weekly magazine with additional photo slideshows and videos and will allow the user to flip through sections as well as zoom in and out of text and photos. Available weekly on Fridays, the TIME app is one of the first apps available at launch and is the beginning of evolving TIME content for the iPad.
The TIME app will also include content from TIME’s international editions and a live newsfeed from TIME.com.
The app launches with several advertisers including Fidelity, Korean Air, Liberty Mutual, Lexus, Toyota and Unilever.
TIME developed the app in conjunction with the New York based digital design shop, The Wonderfactory, and the Dutch publishing-software company, WoodWing.
TIME is a global multimedia brand that includes TIME magazine, the world‚s largest weekly newsmagazine, with a domestic audience of 20 million and a global audience of 25 million; four worldwide editions of TIME magazine; TIME for Kids; and TIME.com, which draws over 9.2 million unique visitors a month (ComScore) and has over 2 million Twitter followers.
Source: TIME
MacDailyNews Take: Interested users will have to purchase this app each Friday for US$4.99. Which is at least $2 too much. $4.99 times 52 weeks (not counting “special issues”) equals $259.48 per year! TIME’s decision-maker(s) are obviously totally divorced from reality. Steve Jobs must have choked on his tofu when TIME told him what they were charging.
Plus, why they don’t release new issues using In App Purchase is beyond us. Unless they’re shooting for failure, in which case they’re right on track. Oh, by the way, both TIME’s iPhone app and iPad-ready website remain free. This iPad app is going to have to be quite the stunner to get people to not only buy it for $4.99 per week, but also to do so manually each and every week.
Our advice for iPadders: No sale. If you’re interested in TIME, go to their website and use it for free until they realize that nobody’s buying their overpriced app manually every week. Hopefully this will enable them to obtain a clue and lower the price to a reasonable level while also figuring out how to make subscribing less cumbersome. Draw the line and hold it now, folks.
If the people at Newsweek were smart (big if), they’d release a Newsweek iPad app with 99-cent weekly In App Purchases or *gasp* an even lower-priced $24.99 per year app with access to all issues (they’d never be smart enough to do that) ASAP. They’d own the e-newsweekly market if TIME didn’t respond appropriately.
This is found money, dummies, not revenue stream to support your entire operations. Start low and raise it incrementally over time like a normal business.
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