There are a few news stories today, started by Rafat Ali at PaidContent, saying the old media newspaper and magazine apps on the iPad are flailing. Ali says despite the buzz, these apps "are barely present in top paid apps, whether by number of apps downloaded, or by the gross revenues from their apps." It's not that that isn't true, but it's certainly not the whole story. If you take a glance at the bestselling paid and free apps in iTunes, you'll see why Ali says what he says. Seven of the top ten free iPad apps are news and weather related, with all the biggies represented (New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, NPR, BBC). Over in the paid section, there are only two old media apps in the top fifty: Time at number 16, and Popular Science at 22. It begs the question: where are the blockbuster paid iPad newspaper apps we in the media have promised ourselves?
The answer: they're either not yet in the App Store, or they're sneakily placed in the free section. The Wall Street Journal app, for example, is not actually free at all--sure, the download is free, but you don't actually have access to any content unless you sign up for the Journal's $18 per month subscription.
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