The Australian is reporting this morning that apps will soon be launched for The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun and other News Limited capital cities dailies. My understanding is that these apps will be an advancement on the app for The Australian. They will also have a monthly fee.
For my money, I still like the New Zealand Herald app – it’s free and funky.
Its actualy a little sad that a company as big as News Corp hasn’t created a truly great app for the iPad. They have the resources, but unfortunatly they seem to think getting the content from one medium to another is good enough – dismissing all the opportunities the technology presents them with. All they need is one blow-away app that they can replicate for all their publications.
They also need to start thinking long term. As more savvy independent publishers move to tablet platforms News Corp is going to face the same wave of free competition that the internet is currently throwing at them. Many smaller publishers dont have the resources to develop mind-blowing iPad apps. In time we’re likely to see aggrigative apps that not only pull together the content of many publishers, but act as the natural app for their publishers. If News Corp was on the ball in the digital media game they would be the ones developing one of these “multi-title apps”, setting the standards for tablet publishing early on in the game and acting as one of the major gatekeepers to the platform. Instead they roll out sub-standard apps and expect people to pay a monthly subscription fee. Typical.