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Sent to you by Bill Boulware via Google Reader: Apple's Newsstand a
Huge Success for Digital Publishers via Wired: Gadget Lab by Christina
Bonnington on 10/26/11
Newsstand, a new feature of iOS 5, is hitting it big with traditional
media publishers thanks to its windfall delivery of new digital
subscriptions.
Newsstand appears as a folder on the iOS home screen, funneling all
your digital magazine and newspaper app subscriptions into a single
location. It provides easy access to these apps, automatically updates
them in the background when new issues are released, and — here's the
payoff — includes a built-in store for purchasing subscriptions.
Purchased titled are displayed individually on Newsstand's virtual
bookshelf.
"Apple Newsstand is changing the way people buy and read magazines,
similar to how people bought and listened to music through iTunes. It's
revolutionary," says Collin Willardson, director of digital marketing
at PixelMags, a digital publishing platform for a number of
high-profile media brands, including Esquire, Dwell, Men's Health and
Cosmopolitan.
Numerous publishers are reporting subscription surges for their
newspaper and magazine apps. PixelMags reported a 1,150 percent growth
increase in the first week after Newsstand and iOS 5 debuted on October
12. It's now sold over four million digital magazines.
"We quickly started to realize just how big of an impact Apple
Newsstand was having on our business when on the morning after launch,
I received a phone call from our server company wondering if we were
under attack," said Ryan Marquis, PixelMags' founder and COO, in a
company's press release. "I told them that we were for sure – from all
the new iOS 5 users who wanted download magazines from us."
Conde Nast, Wired's parent company, saw a 268 percent spike in
subscriptions since the Newsstand app landed. "It's clear that the
focused attention and greater discoverability that Newsstand provides
our brands has been embraced by the consumer," said Monica Ray,
Executive Vice President of Conde Nast.
Without a doubt, Newsstand increases the visibility of
subscription-based magazine and newspaper apps, which often get buried
under the onslaught of games, social media and photo apps that tend to
dominate the App Store's charts. But thanks to Newsstand, it seems, the
National Geographic iPad app managed to reach the #18 spot in the Free
Apps chart last week. The New York Times iPhone app is #27 today. And
with a button that takes you directly to the magazine and newspaper
section of the App Store, the Newsstand app makes it easy to snatch up
subscriptions to quickly fill its own empty shelves.
Other success stories: New York Times app subscriptions absolutely
soared after Newsstand launched. Its iPad app alone saw 189,000 new
user downloads, seven times the number from the week before (27,000).
The New York Times saw even more remarkable numbers for its iPhone app:
1.8 million downloads, or 85 times more downloads than the 21,000 of
the week before. Meanwhile, Future Plc, a UK-based publisher of niche
consumer-enthusiast magazines, saw a 750 percent increase in sales
after Newsstand debuted.
But not everyone is happy with the addition of Newsstand to the iOS
ecosystem. For some iOS users, the empty, glaring bookshelf of the
Newsstand icon has been a source of irritation. Indeed, the addition of
Newsstand is listed as one of very few complaints about iOS 5 across
the web. Because Newsstand is a folder, rather than an app, you can't
easily remove it from your home screen, but some clever folks figured
out a workaround that doesn't require jail breaking.
These individuals, however, seem to largely be in the minority. Legions
of users are filling up those bare shelves with digital subscriptions,
giving a much-needed boost to magazine and newspaper app makers, and
the publishing industry in general.
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