Fortune
Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports that some publishers are finding success selling on the iPad via the Zinio newsstand app, a platform that may face a challenge from Apple’s own subscription plans.
Elmer-DeWitt writes that Zinio, which offers replica editions on multiple platforms such as the iPad, iPhone and desktop PCs, has seen a 350 percent increase in digital revenue since last April. He says that some individual titles have seen an even larger growth, starting from a small original base:
” ‘The numbers,’ says Paul Michelman, director of product development at Harvard Business Review, one of Zinio’s success stories, ‘have gone from the dozens to the thousands.’ “
However, Apple’s planned iTunes subscription service, the details of which are still unclear, could pose problems for Zinio and its clients. Elmer-DeWitt questions how, or if, Apple will allow a competing subscription service to continue on its mobile devices:
“The terms and conditions by which publishers will work with Apple in the future keep changing — at least as reported in the press (see here and here). It’s not certain whether the Zinio newsstand will survive in its current form when Apple either creates its own newsstand, as some have suggested, or folds everything into iTunes.”
