Apple News+, launched nine months ago, does not seem to be a cure-all for publishers’ business model issues.
The early results so far indicate that Apple’s move to offer a paid subscription service for news is having little impact on the bottom lines of publishers. While Apple News+ has helped with generating some additional revenue and reaching more international audiences, publishers indicate that the revenue generated from the initiative is, to date, modest.
“We’re happy to be on there because it’s another way to increase subscription revenue, but it’s not like it’s a huge boon for our business or anything like that,” one magazine exec said. To emphasize the point, this exec added: “It’s not really relevant.”
MacDailyNews Take: Of all of Apple’s services, the one that would benefit most from an “Apple Prime” bundle would be Apple News+.
…and if news wasn’t fake and propaganda and biased, then it might even wow users to subscribe…
Of course I don’t know, but I suspect you don’t subscribe to Apple News+ or you would realize the content that is available is not just political news. There is a wide variety of sources. Yesterday I read an article in National Geographic about sequencing the DNA of a woman who lived about 6,700 years ago. It was fascinating. The trouble is, there is not enough captivating content, at least for me, to justify the almost $120 a year cost. When my free trial is up, I’m not going to subscribe. As I have observed in previous posts about Apple News+, you have to have really compelling content to justify the $9.99 per month cost. News is almost a dirty word for a lot of MDN commenters. But Apple General Interest Magazine Stand+ is not a very good brand.
Yep. News is fungible. There is no compelling reason to get news from one vendor.
It’s Newsstand all over again.
They need to up their game. teamup with Siri, make her our customizable news Avatar. expand the realm of the news consumption in a ways not yet impersonate.
Apple has hurt/is hurting themselves greatly by the product “re-run” and not showing any material difference. Giving a free trial almost makes it worse, as it’s an attempt to hook customers into something that didn’t have a real draw previously.
News/info is at a challenging point and it’s a prime-time to offer a differentiating product. Apple is missing the opportunity.
For once, I blame the software not the content. It was so poorly implemented and NEVER ‘just worked’. I would click on a News link and be taken to a paywall, even thou said content was part of the package. Happened frequently.