Apple may hold a press conference next month, but the new products are not hardware
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Report from Leiphone.com (leiphone-sz)
According to Leifeng.com, on February 12, foreign media BuzzFeed News reported that Apple will hold its first Apple conference this year on March 25, 2019, and the conference will be held at the Steve Jobs Theater in Apple's new headquarters.
Judging from the pace of Apple's press conferences in the past few years, the March 25th time node is not surprising; but what is surprising is the content of the press conference. Because according to information obtained by BuzzFeed News from insiders, this press conference has nothing to do with the rumored new iPad, new generation AirPods and other hardware, and the protagonist of the press conference will be Apple's paid subscription news service.
Considering that John Paczkowski, the BuzzFeed News author who wrote this report, has revealed the exact time of Apple's press conferences many times, foreign media The Verge believes that there is a high possibility that this news is true, and we only need to wait for Apple's official confirmation and external invitation.
Apple News is over three years old
Apple officially entered the news distribution field in 2015.
In June 2015, Apple recruited journalists to form an editorial team to operate its News service. According to reports, the Apple editorial team will be responsible for contacting publishers. These publishers include the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Guardian and the Economist, which have signed contracts with Apple to provide content for its news service. In the recruitment advertisement, Apple stated that qualified candidates should be able to "identify and send the best domestic, international and local breaking news."
At WWDC 2015, Apple officially announced Apple News and said that the app would be officially launched on iOS 9. From the situation at the time, Apple reached an agreement with publishers such as the New York Times, Conde Nast, and ESPN to provide users with 30 free articles every day; this app is personalized and will recommend articles based on the user's reading history.
This service is seen by the outside world as part of the paywall service created by Apple.
On September 16, 2015, with the official release of iOS 9, Apple News was officially launched as an iOS application on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, only in the US market; and in the subsequent iOS 9.1 version, Apple News was launched in the Australian and British markets.
At WWDC 2016, Apple announced that Apple News will be updated in iOS 10. Details include a new App icon and a new For You section. At the same time, Apple also announced that it will provide paid subscription options for specific publishers and news resources in Apple News, and support features such as push notifications for major news.
Then at WWDC 2018, Apple announced that the Apple News app was ported to macOS. Starting from macOS 10.14, the app is still only available to users in three markets: Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
After more than three years of development, the existing Apple News has achieved extensive coverage of its hardware products, and has also improved in content and interaction, but it is clear that it still has greater room for development.
Apple has acquired the 'Netflix of magazines'
Apple has actually taken an important step in launching a paid subscription service for users.
In March 2018, while attending the annual SXSW conference and being interviewed, Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and services, announced that the number of paid subscribers to Apple Music had exceeded 38 million. He also announced Apple's acquisition of the magazine subscription service Texture. At the same time, Apple also released a statement on its acquisition of Texture on its official website.
Texture is an app with iOS (covering iPhone and iPad), Android and Windows versions. Users can read the electronic versions of more than 200 world-renowned magazines provided by Texture, including People, Time, FastCompany, Billboard, Forbes, Reader's Digest, etc., for US$9.99 per month. In addition, in order to attract readers to subscribe, Texture also provides a 7-day trial period.
The reason why Texture is able to obtain so many magazine resources is that the company behind it, Next Issue Media LLC, was jointly established by several magazine publishers, including Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, Meredith Corporation, News Corp, Rogers Media, and Time Inc.
In 2009, the six companies jointly established Next Issue Media LLC, and launched an app called Nest Issure in 2010, which was later renamed Texture. During this period, Next Issue Media LLC received $50 million in financing from media such as BuzzFeed, Vox Media and Imgur. In 2016, Texture was selected as the best app of the year by Apple App Store.
In fact, Texture is often considered the Netflix of magazines, thanks to a very similar subscription model.
Leifeng.com learned that Apple acquired Texture in order to integrate the magazine content provided by the latter into the Apple News service. Eddy Cue said that Apple is committed to obtaining and distributing high-quality news reports from reliable media and allowing magazines to produce beautifully designed and highly interactive stories for readers. He said that Apple will not let readers receive repeated information flow reminders of the same story in order to sell advertisements, hoping to avoid the current industry malpractices.
In this light, Apple is bound to launch a paid news content subscription service. The acquisition of Texture is not only about acquiring new business for Apple, it also means that Apple has established some kind of connection with the many content publishing companies behind it - which is crucial for Apple's continued efforts in the news content business.
However, Apple still has some hurdles to overcome
One of the biggest reasons why Apple is investing in news content is that it has a lot of money. As Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president, said at SXSW 2018, "We are making a big investment, and money is not a problem."
But in fact, there may still be some variables in the Apple conference reported by BuzzFeed News about the monthly membership news subscription service, because Apple and publishers have disagreements on revenue distribution - to put it bluntly, it's still a matter of money.
According to reports, the subscription service will allow users to pay a monthly fee of about $10 (undetermined and may change in the future) and then read an unlimited number of articles from participating news publishers. When Apple promoted it to some content providers (including news organizations), it said it would retain the general revenue from the news subscription service as its own commission; and the remaining half of the membership fee revenue would be invested in a fund pool, which would be allocated to different media publishers based on the time users spend on the articles.
Of course, some content providers do not agree with these terms.
According to people familiar with the matter, the New York Times and the Washington Post, two well-known American media, have not yet agreed to Apple's news subscription service to use their content, partly because of concerns about the proposed terms, which have not been disclosed by the media before; the Wall Street Journal has similar concerns about the sharing method. So in fact, negotiations on this cooperation are still ongoing.
In addition to money, some content publishers have other concerns about this cooperation. For example, when Apple controls users and channels, content providers will not be able to obtain member data, including credit card information and email addresses - this is not conducive to their control of user information and the resulting promotion and interaction. Some media professionals are also worried that Apple's launch of a monthly subscription membership service will affect the independent online membership subscription services that already exist in some media.
However, in the long run, the influence of Apple's ecosystem is self-evident, and content subscription services including news and magazines have established their new business model in the industry; from this perspective, cooperation with Apple is also a way to increase user subscriptions. Of course, for Apple, this cooperation is also an important source of revenue for it to expand its own services.
For Apple, after the revenue from hardware businesses such as the iPhone has reached saturation, the revenue from service businesses will only become more and more important. Therefore, Leifeng.com believes that Apple is almost certain to launch a paid news subscription service, given that it has already laid out service businesses such as music, payment, and video. The only uncertainty is the method and timing.
Finally, Leifeng.com will continue to pay attention to the rumored Apple conference.
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