According to analytics firm Distimo, Apple's Newsstand content aggregator and online content store for iOS devices has helped push digital publication sales, with most of the revenue coming from in-app purchases, reports Business Insider.
Subscriptions or purchases of the New York Times, The Daily and the New Yorker top the list of downloaded content, and news apps as a whole account for 7 percent of the 200 highest grossing apps.
Revenue mostly comes in the form of in-app subscription purchases as many digital publication apps are available as a free download. This allows for content providers to offer a variety of purchasing options in one place. As in other Apple media stores, the company takes a 30 percent cut of each sale.
Unveiled in June 2011 as part of iOS 5, the Newsstand gathers a user's newspaper and magazine apps in a single non-removable folder. A special digital publication section, which can be accessed via Newsstand, was added to the App Store alongside feature's release.
A December 2011 report showed that the storefront and content library helped to accelerate content sales, with major publisher Conde Nast recording a 268 percent rise in paid subscriptions.
