Publishers leery of doing business with Apple
ABCi, the interactive media arm of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, has issued a new report showing that American and Canadian publishers feel that mobile technology is very important to their futures. As a result, many of these publishers are working on making content available on mobile phones, tablets, and e-reader devices. The report, covered in Poynter Online, shows that a full 60% of respondents feel that making a mixture of ad-supported free content and premium paid content available to consumers is the best way to succeed in the mobile market.
With publishers finally waking up to the fact that the world has gone electronic, ABCi reports that Apple is expected to be the mobile device manufacturer with the most impact on the publishing industry in the next year. But the picture isn't all that rosy.
Most of ABCi's respondents felt that Apple's iTunes business model and the lack of solid analytics available from Apple were a bad way to do business. Only 19% of those surveyed said that they were satisfied with the iTunes app business model, and a paltry 11% were satisfied with the analytics and customer data that Apple shares with publishers.
The report points out that the big prize is Apple's to win, but that the company also needs to consider drastically changing its publishing business model before publishers will be happy. What do you think? Should Apple cater to the whims of traditional publishers in order to snap up the mobile publishing market, or is it the stodgy publishers that should change to fit the Apple model? Leave a comment below.
[Thanks to @steverubel for the Twitter tip]
