“Apple Inc. plans to integrate recently acquired magazine app Texture into Apple News and debut its own premium subscription offering, according to people familiar with the matter,” Mark Gurman and Gerry Smith report for Bloomberg. “The Cupertino, California company agreed last month to buy Texture, which lets users subscribe to more than 200 magazines for $9.99 a month.”
“Apple cut about 20 Texture staff soon after, according to one of the people. The world’s largest technology company is integrating Texture technology and the remaining employees into its Apple News team, which is building the premium service,” Gurman and Smith report. “An upgraded Apple News app with the subscription offering is expected to launch within the next year, and a slice of the subscription revenue will go to magazine publishers that are part of the program, the people said.”
“Executives have said they’re targeting services revenue of roughly $50 billion by 2021,” Gurman and Smith report. “During a recent earnings conference call, Apple told analysts it had a total of 240 million paid subscriptions, with 58 percent year-over-year growth.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As expected.
SEE ALSO:
Amazon considered buying Texture before Apple bit – March 13, 2018
Apple pushes deeper into news – March 13, 2018
Apple to acquire Next Issue Media and its digital magazine-subscription service Texture – March 12, 2018
Is this going to be another liberal propaganda and opinion news source? You have to hold your nose a little even for Wall Street Journal while reading it.
You think Rupert’s rag is liberal? Thanks for displaying your personal bias. You’ll fit right in with the russian trolls on MDN.
It is OK for liberals to display their personal bias but not OK for a conservative immigrant like me to show my personal bias!
I think -politically incorrect- therefore I am.
Nobody said you can’t display your bias. But if you think the WSJ is liberal, Paul is correct, you must fit right in with the ultra right xenophobic theocratic law crowd.
WSJ is leftist-globalist. Their unofficial slogan proposed by former Editor in Chief Robert Bartley is “there shall be open borders”.
Apple should buy up the terrible companies that the Analcysts works for, that way Apple stock will progress instead of the doom and gloom battering it gets every day
I never will ever pay for the excretament that passes for news today. Bad idea Apple.
Uh, no.
If a report contains facts without opinion, omission, or conjecture, then it cannot be liberal or conservative. Complete truth has no bias.
The problem is that what people call “news” is mostly narrative entertainment. That entertainment is sponsored by advertisers whose mission is to scare, distract, or misinform the public enough to become dependent on whatever product they are selling.
Subscription based news does not inherently solve this problem, but it can reduce the dependency of a news organization on advertisers and thereby reduce the tendency of the reporters from developing a bias in favor of the hands that feed them.
True independence in news reporting is perhaps more reliably achieved by a large dose of nonprofit, peer-reviewed reports (from university, nonpartisan government agency, or NGO sources for example). I sincerely doubt Apple will be successful in making such comprehensive, accurate reports sexy and dumbed down enough for popular consumption. Even superficially smart people refuse to take in all facts because of time constraints and plain laziness. It’s always easier to listen/watch a popular talking head that never cites his figures, discloses his funding, names the authors and editors, or shares raw data. Faux News across the political spectrum wins eyeballs by presenting simplistic and grossly inaccurate stories to address complex issues.
Nevertheless, the beancounters at Apple think that getting everyone on the hook for subscriptions for everything is the only answer. That is just sad. The company that used to make great Macs now is just a wannabe middle man cable company with no physical distribution assets.
Good points; well-stated. FoxNews is popular because it has top notch production values and because its hosts speak with energy, some drama, and they vary the pitch of their voices, really, so they are performers hence entertaining. By contrast, “…nonprofit, peer-reviewed reports (from university, nonpartisan” personalities drone on; Their voices are monotones much of the time. This does not attract a viewer who expects to be emotionally dazzled. This is the problem that could be overcome by adding dazzle to NPR which seems to be purpously boring and understated and droning.
Another losing venture, brought to you by Steve’s worst mistake, Tim Cook….