Apple will announce their new innovation tomorrow: Will “it” do for publishing what the iPod did for music?
Tomorrow in San Francisco, Apple will announce to the world media their new innovation. The buzz for the new device has been deafening. It’s been called: the super tablet, the iSlate the iPad and a few more. The speculated promise is everything from thermal paper to uber multi-touch, in-the-bathtub, under-the-pillow reading and monumental media device. Salivating for readers and media consumers and terrifying for publishers. Will the tablet change everything? Will it do for publishing what iPod did for music? And if it does, are publishers ready for the demand for digital content? Probably not.
The even bigger question goes beyond the availability of digital content, but begs the question of paid content. Will consumers pay for content they currently get for free? Do people pay for water? We’ll see…
More about Apple’s “news” tomorrow:
Apple iTablet rumour round-up – Telegraph
The Apple Tablet: a complete history, supposedly — Engadget
Play Paywall!, the new web game sweeping the newspaper industry » Nieman Journalism Lab
One thing different this time is that Amazon is already an established player. The tablet will surely change the world of publishing, but I doubt that publishers and retailers will wait around till Apple gets a stranglehold (aka the music market) on the eReader content market.
There are 3 things that publishers & retailers should do to proactively:
1- Produce and add value added complementary content such as videos, author notes, background which can only be accessed after purchase.
2- Start experimenting with subscription, pay-per-article and various other business models.
3-Entrench the customer relationship they already have.
If they wait to do so, I can surely foresee Apple repeating what they did in the music business, intermediating and establishing a stranglehold difficult to break.
Parth
Well the iPad has it’s critics, including me! Today Bill Gates chimed in. I can just imagine Gates and Jobs in the Xerox PARC cafeteria going at it…
“You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard – in other words a netbook – will be the mainstream on that”, Gates said.
“So, it’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it”.
-Bill Gates
Quoted from: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/31414/bill-gates-chimes-in-ipad-comment