Apple News business chief has stepped down less than a year after launching Apple News+, a subscription service that has struggled to attract subscribers.
The Apple News+ subscription service brings together over 300 popular magazines, leading newspapers and digital publishers into curated experience within the Apple News app. Available in the U.S. and Canada, Apple News+ presents the best and most relevant articles to meet any range of interests from publications such as Vogue, National Geographic Magazine, People, ELLE, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times.
Mark Gurman and Gerry Smith for Bloomberg:
Liz Schimel, the outgoing executive, joined in mid-2018 after serving as the president of international business at magazine publisher Conde Nast, said people familiar with the move who asked not to be identified discussing personnel matters. At Apple, Schimel oversaw relationships with advertisers and news publishers…
News is a key part of Apple’s shift to subscription services as it tries to squeeze more revenue from customers. The company introduced Apple News in 2015 as an app to aggregate stories from a variety of sources and added a $10 monthly subscription last March…
In addition to subscriptions, Apple News generates revenue from advertising inside the app, which runs on nearly all Apple devices. The company said in January that the Apple News app is used by 100 million people a month in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and U.S., but it didn’t disclose the number of paying customers, as it has done for Apple Music.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote in mid-December, “Of all of Apple’s services, the one that would benefit most from an ‘Apple Prime’ bundle would be Apple News+.”
There is more than enough free news available to most people, and magazine content is predominantly advertisements.
Useless product. News is in abundance. Why would anyone pay for this? I love apple but they should fold this ASAP.
Who wants a new subscription source of leftist news? Its free from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR.
Sorry Kent, those five mainstream news sources are all quite centrist. If you really want something from the left that’s as extreme as Fox News, you need to check out Communist Party USA, Redneck Revolt, and World Socialist Web Site.
Very, very, sorry SJG you could not be more wrong. Centrist sources of news is LAUGHABLE. CNN is the 24/7/365 Trump takedown channel and Project Veritas published an insider video exposing their owner saying so. Obviously, you missed the video expose. I will agree the alphabet channels disguise their bias better than CNN and MSNBC, subtle but it still exists and over 85% of journalists in newspapers and TV are registered Democrats.
Nuff said…
The Communist Party USA leader voted for Hillary Clinton on 2016. The Democrat Party is todays Communist Party. Bernie Sanders honeymooned in Moscow and admired the breadlines. Isn’t it great to have America served now with a major party that espouses the Communist Manifesto over the Constitution?
This is a hard one to get right. So much content online and unless you are an avid news or magazine reader I can’t see many people buying a subscription.
The News app is okay. I sometimes find interesting stuff in it but not worth a subscription without a better chance of finding compelling content.
I use Apple News multiple times a day. Apple News+ is a cold product though. Weak and useless. Wrap it into a bulk subscription or unload it.
Too expensive. Not worth it. A lot like me.
I liked the idea of being able to read a wide variety of magazines and the reality is that if I read two magazines per month I’m probably saving money. However £9.99 Sterling per month just seems that bit too high. The sooner that Apple comes up with its services bundling arrangement (Cloud, music, news, games and TV+) the better (maybe call it ‘Apple Core’ assuming Yoko Ono and Sir Paul don’t object).
I am using News+ and its features and lacks make me wonder why Tim Cook would have allowed this useless service to launch at all. Tons of summaries of articles in News+ publications, when clicked, lead to a road block demanding subscription to read them. When a Pub is opened, you cannot do a search within the pub. What News+ results in for me – a waste of time and a waste of money. If Apple can’t get the publishers to release a try access to ALL of the content of what they claim is included, shut it down. Useless. Waste. Of Time. Of Money.
“Apple can’t get the publishers to release a try access to ALL of the content of what they claim is included, shut it down. Useless. Waste. Of Time. Of Money.”
AMEN!
I’m not a paid subscriber to Apple News+, but I am in the last half of a three month free trial. I wonder how many of the commenters on the value of Apple News+ have actually used it at all, let alone for more than a few days. It takes a while to find what’s there and what might be compelling enough to pay for it.
As for the complaint that it’s “leftist news,” that’s a very narrow view of the content. The Wall Street Journal has never been viewed as “leftist.” Apple News+ gives the reader access to a lot of content which millions of people pay to get, including the WSJ, LA Times, Rolling Stone, Bloomberg Business Week, Sports Illustrated, and National Geographic, to name a few. The cost of a few of these publications is more than the cost of Apple News+. Apple just hasn’t seemed to be able to put their service before the eyes of enough hard core magazine junkies. There is something wrong with the marketing of this service. The WSJ alone is almost $20 a month, and that’s discounted.