Amber Neely
Apple's Apple News+ launched earlier this year with impressive initial subscriber counts, but the company has failed to bring in significant numbers since then.
When it launched in March, Apple News+ had wrangled more than 200,000 subscriptions in its first two days. Since then, the company has struggled to gain new subscribers, according to those familiar with the subject.
Apple News+ costs customers $9.99 a month, the same cost as Apple Music, and gives customers access to over 300 curated publications. Publications included are People, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and paywalled versions of popular online news sites.
However, the subscribers don't seem to be rolling in, according to CNBC. One publisher had told them his company received somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 per month in revenue, a number that was far lower than initially expected.
Interestingly enough, another publisher disclosed that while subscription revenue was lower than expected, it had brought in a different demographic of readers that skewed younger and more female. The same publisher had also said that advertising revenue from Apple News, a free news service from Apple, has consistently trended upwards.
Publisher revenue is an issue Apple is reportedly attempting to improve, with one June report indicating it is seeking input from participating publishers to tweak the service. At that time, publishers who were allegedly advised by Apple they would see ten times the revenue of Apple acquisition Texture in its first year of operation, one publishing executive claimed "it's one-twentieth of what they said. It isn't coming true."
Apple News is, however, starting to pay off for some European publishers, despite the relatively small number of countries offering Apple News+. An August report revealed publishers were seeing increased revenues from being on the basic Apple News service, including some where ad impressions had tripled while revenue doubled.
A report on Thursday had claimed that Apple is including a section in deals signed, telling publishers that it reserves the right to bundle services in the future. Sources familiar with the matter say that Apple may roll out these bundles in 2020, in an attempt to get more people to subscribe. This would likely give users the option to subscribe to Apple TV+, Apple Music, and Apple News+ for one lower monthly rate.
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45 Comments
Unfortunately, IMHO, AN+ is NewsStand 2.0, but suffering from the same mistakes. There should be a unified format that doesn’t include scanned/PDF pages. Content should be interactive vs static, etc.
Well, nobody cares for News...
It's not like there aren't 200000 other free online outlets....
Biggest worry here apart from the truly dreadful app is that bundling will mean the publishers get even less of a cut from Apple so more will leave the platform. I never subscribed because my two favourite magazines weren't even available despite both being on the huge Condé Nast publishing.
Apple News is another me too product that has been tried with less than spectacular results by any number of startups.
I am a heavy reader and Apple customer- the very kind of person they would like to target- and I have no interest in the product. I pay the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Economist, Bloomberg News, The Atlantic, Wired and others for content. BTW I pay Apple Insider for ad-free. I do not need an aggregator and I do not want Apple filtering what I see or pushing "curated" content on me.
The margins for news organizations are fairly thin and the business model Apple is following makes it even more so. Just as subscription services with music, those who create content are getting pennies on the dollar compared to a direct subscription. I would rather they have a larger budget to be able to create more original content.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg is the one who reported Apple is considering bundling these underperforming services.
If anyone from Apple is lurking, why not create an MVNO that is secure with great performance and reasonable rates. I would gladly pay for something like that.