News Corp. has delayed next week’s launch of its iPad-only newspaper, The Daily. The effort, undertaken in collaboration with Apple, is being delayed by issues with the subscription platform. While a new launch date hasn’t been set, there are reports that the delay will be numbered in weeks, not months.
Apple’s subscription system, a the first for its iTunes Store, is considered critical to the success of the project. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, a source “familiar with the matter” said the “the app and the service work,” but the issue is “getting them to talk to each other.”
Presentation at MoMA
The launch was expected to take place on Jan. 19 at a joint presentation by Apple CEO Steve Jobs and News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This is the second delay, since the iPad newspaper was initially expected to be released last month.
The new digital-only publication will be priced at 99 cents weekly. But the effectiveness of the subscription system is expected to be at least as important as the pricing — especially in how it handles the publisher’s relationship to the subscriber. No current platform exists through iTunes, the funnel which Apple controls, that provides a subscription system acceptable to most publishers.
While a number of iPad publications exist, they are mostly ports of existing print magazines, and they are sold on the iTunes Store in a way that is not unlike the purchase of an app.
Waiting for Subscription Platform
Publishers are reportedly wary of giving Apple access to their subscription lists, so once the platform is operational and there are indications of how well The Daily is faring, there could be an acceptable iTunes model for publishers to build and manage subscriptions of digital periodicals. Until a viable…