iPad Getting a Subscription Infrastructure?

itwbennett writes "Peter Smith is blogging about an article in the San Jose Mercury News leaking news that Apple is 'almost ready to take the wraps off a new system to support subscriptions. The terms, if the leaks are accurate, sound less than ideal for publishers though. Apple will take 40% of advertising revenue, and 30% of subscription fees from participating publishers. In return, Apple will offer consumers the ability to opt-in to sharing their data with the publishers.' Apple isn't commenting on the speculation. 'In somewhat related news, Apple has released iOS 4.2 to developers. This is the version of iOS that will let iPads, iPhones and iPad Touches print to a WiFi-enabled or shared printer on a local network, via the new AirPrint service. It sounds like you'll be able to print articles from your digitally delivered newspaper before too long,' says Smith."

Comments

Pricing for services rendered?

[Peach Rings]

It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.

Re:Pricing for services rendered?

[causality]

It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.

They still have competition. You can get other devices that use other platforms. That's true for iPhones and it's also true for iPads, especially if the tasks for which you would use a tablet can be done on a netbook. In any case, there is a market here that they could price themselves out of. They don't wish to shoot themselves in the foot, that's all. At this point it's not evidence of some kind of benevolence, though it doesn't rule that out either. It's merely consistent with the business practices that have gotten them to where they are today.

The equation doesn't change until and unless they obtain a monopoly on such a market that is comparable to the dominance of Windows on the desktop.

Additionally I'm not sure if it would be "price gouging" when it's a luxury item and the customers knew or could easily have informed themselves that they were investing in a platform that is not open and is under the control of a single vendor. Those who really care about this possibility tend to insist on open platforms that are not subject to vendorlock.

Re:Pricing for services rendered?

[nine-times]

Also it's worth noting that this might not be a horrible deal. I don't know the market well enough to gauge it, but if Apple is providing all of the storage, bandwidth, ad deals and ad placement, etc. then it might be that all the content owners need to bring is the content.

40% of ad revenue sounds like a lot, but does Google kick >60% of their ad revenue back to the websites that place ads? 30% of subscription fees, again, sounds like a lot, but that means you get 70% without needing to pay any of the costs associated with distribution.

Re:Pricing for services rendered?

[ceoyoyo]

I suspect newspapers pay more than 30-40% for printing and distribution right now. Possibly a very good deal for them.

Re:Pricing for services rendered?

[BradleyUffner]

30% Subscription revenue says they are planning to continue to milk the subscription content sellers.

It sounds to me like apple has decided its easier to fleece the flock of developers than actually charge the end user for what their services cost.

Boy, I wonder why Google hasn't thought about that.....

30% is the same cut google takes on android market applications.

Obviously talking to the experts

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

  "If you can put animation and multimedia into ads, that will greatly enhance reader views. I am certain of that."

hmm...

Re:Obviously talking to the experts

[Ethanol-fueled]

Rrrrrrrrgh.

Nothing is more annoying than sites like CNN.com (in before sheeple), in which compelling-looking links to stories direct the viewer to just a video(usually along with a mandatory ad that can do tricky stuff like pause automatically when the window loses focus).

Yeah, I know they started putting the "TV" icon next to the links. It's still infuriating that the text versions are not offered or are so hidden that you might as well just google it and go somewhere else.

Gadgets and the internet are all about instant gratification. Many of us can read much faster than we can sit through a video and an ad.

Printers?

[mark72005]

Huh? Printers?

I haven't had one of those in 5+ years.

Ink always dried out from lack of use.

Re:Printers?

[guruevi]

Try a laser printer. You can get those from $50 (B&W) to $150 these days, don't come with empty cartridges and the cartridges last anywhere from 2000-6000 pages (for some this will last ~5 years). The ink doesn't dry out and can be used practically forever. I have HP LaserJet II cartridges that expired in 2004 which still work.

Re:Printers?

[dissy]

The ink doesn't dry out and can be used practically forever.

Toner wouldn't work too well if it wasn't dried out ;}

Kidding aside, my HP 4mv is still going like a champ, and it was made back in 1995.

When I first got it, it was used to print billing invoices, somewhere around 6000 sheets a month.
This ate through about 2-3 toner cartridges a year.
In it's later life as my personal printer, seeing very low page counts, a toner cartridge easily lasted 5+ years.

Most printers of this type either have built in or can have added on network support, and they spoke more protocols than you will know what to do with, for a ton of hardware. Odds are TCP and PCL is all one will use these days however.

I could never recommend an inkjet to anyone, period.

Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed?

[CosmeticLobotamy]

Are you advocating more regulation?

Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages

Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

While regulatory capture actually was a big part of the problem, those scary-sounding loans made under the low-income provisions weren't really an issue at all. It was mostly Joe Six-Pack and Jane Boxwine, stereotypical stalwarts of the middle class, trying to get into the McMansion-flipping business.

Three words

[ls -la]

About Fucking Time. I was printing wirelessly off my Palm Pilot 15 years ago.

Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed?

[ColdWetDog]

The FEC? Federal Election Commission. No way that Jobs is gonna let anybody vote on this.

Maybe the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). But I certainly don't want the government meddling into how newspaper subscriptions are paid for. They've got their work cut out for themselves doing important things like not doing anything about chronic Salmonella contamination of egg farms and approving Environmental Impact Statements concerning the potential harming of walruses in the Gulf of Mexico after an oil spill.

Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed?

[phantomfive]

US fared worse because we had regulations that encouraged sub-prime mortgages.

I always shake my head in sadness whenever I see people getting in a fight over 'more' or 'less' regulation. It isn't the quantity of regulation that matters, it's the quality. You can't throw random regulation at a problem and expect things to get better. You can't randomly remove regulation and expect the world to be more beautiful. Finely crafted regulation can keep the economy humming, but poorly written regulations can choke it.

Whenever anyone proposes a change in regulation, don't ask, "is it more or less?" ask "what changes?" People who do that spend less of their time looking like idiots.

40% and 30% for Apple?

[I'm Not There (1956)]

Content providers somewhat have to agree on whatever pricing policy Apple forces them. Apple have been so successful for the last ten years that companies don't think they can afford losing its platform to sell their product or service. If Steve Jobs suggested something similar to music companies in 2000 for iTunes and iPod they would have kicked him out of their offices.

Re:40% and 30% for Apple?

[jo_ham]

Remember this is wild speculation from a supposed leak. It's not an Apple press release.

Apple know they have the market controlled (on their device) but they're not stupid. Consider the revenue sharing on the app store itself - it's not set up to gouge the developers. I wouldn't imagine this one will be either - but that's just my opinion. YMMV.

Re:Wow

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

iPod owning retards will finally be able to do yet another thing they could have done better all along had they bought a laptop in the first place.

Did you pull your laptop out of your pocket to post that?

Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed?

[cdrguru]

A significant part of the subprime problem came from the bond rating agencies, like Moody's. They rated bonds based on mortgages that were almost certain to default as AAA, or investment grade. This made is possible for pension funds and others that demand fixed-income financial instruments with virtually a guarantee of stability to invest in this sort of bond.

Other folks then took out insurance on the bonds for little or no money at all because obviously these were "investment grade" bonds. So the insurance paid off handsomely when the loans default and the investors lose everything - since they aren't the ones holding the insurance.

Once it got around that it was possible to package up a passle of these soon-to-default loans and pass them off on unsuspecting folks as being quality bonds virtually everyone wanted to get into the act. It was easy money. At that point "mortgage brokers" could get money from many different sources based on the ease of getting the mortgage-backed bonds sold. They had no liability if the mortgage went bad, because it was sold off to someone else. The brokers got a hefty commission for loan origination and there was no control on this - nor should there really be at that level.

This is what everyone seems to be missing. What new regulations are there on the bond rating agencies? None. What will prevent another round of this taking place next week? Nothing. What is going to happen when the mortgage defaults percolate up to the bonds that pension funds invested in? The funds will go bankrupt, as will states and municipalities that invested in these bonds. Nothing has been done about the bonds themselves.

We have introduced a bunch of nearly irrelevant regulations that affect banks and some large financial institutions but none of this addresses the origin of the problem. If someone is standing on a street corner passing out checks for $1000 people will take them, no matter what. This is basically what happened in 2003-2006 and while the guy has gone to lunch there is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when the money starts flowing again, we will be right back where we were before when this "crisis" started.

This is it, isn't it?

[Nursie]

This is how Jobs and Murdoch start to get money for previously free new info. Murdoch just needs to come up with a newspaper delivery metaphor for iPad owners and they'll walk right in, subscribe to the app and start what uncle rupert has been fantasising about - the return to paid news.

It won't matter that we on /. won't participate. It'll just be another area that the general public perceive us geeks to be weird or even cheap about, as they go around paying for shit we get fro free, at the same time taking their ad-driven revenue generation stats away from non-Steve approved media, killing it.

Yeah, that's probably paranoid.

The future is now!

[apparently]

I mean, holy shit, forget hoverboards and auto-drying jackets:

It sounds like you'll be able to print articles from your digitally delivered newspaper before too long,' says Smith.

Printing!?? From a digital source??!??!?!?!? HOLY FUCKING SHIT BOSS, I've had a computer since I was a tyke, and now I get to live in the new modern world in which we can print! YES!

Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed?

[nine-times]

This is going off-topic, but you're right; people have oversimplified.

It's the same basic problem as taxes and spending. It's not just an issue of whether the government is taxing too much or too little, but an even bigger issue is, who are they taxing and for what behavior? Similarly, there's not a simple dollar amount that the government should spend, and if they spend that amount everything will be good. The question is, what are they spending that money on?

Really these are all complicated issues, but there are a lot of people who need it to be bring everything down to a yes-or-no answer.

SPAMers think this too.

[DrYak]

interrestingly enough "About Fucking Time" is exactly what all the SPAMers and virus writers are thinking. Un-like your PalmPilot which used a highly directionnal IrDA beam to print (or the short ranged Bluetooth that modern wireless printers offer), this uses wireless *networking*. And in a standard fashion.

so this opens up a whole new world of SPAM possibilities and exploits. *Paper*-SPAM possibilities. It's the SPAM-over-Fax era all-over again !