Voor het verschijnen van de iPad schreef ik een stuk over de vraag wat Apple zou doen als ze in de publishing business zouden gaan. Dit deed ik via een Slideshare presentatie. De presentatie kwam op The Next Web, maar ook op Cult of Mac, zeg maar de One More Thing van Engeland. De presentatie was een paar uurtjes hot op het internet. F5′en achter Twitter. Hartstikke leuk.
Maar het wordt nog leuker!
Vorige week kreeg ik een mail van ene Vinícius Cherobino – een journalist uit Brazilië. Hij wilde een paar vragen stellen over het volgende:
The idea of my article is to discuss how the publishing sector, in opposition to the musical industry, for instance, seem more worried and almost terrified to let Apple centralize all buying process (either as subscription or individual editions)
The story is for Meio & Mensagem, a Brazilian magazine with 200k copies per month about communication, publishing and press issues.
Ik krijg een copy van het artikel, maar het zal in Portugees zijn, dus hier een uncut versie van het geheel.
How do you analyze Apple’s actions in the publishing business? What this company is doing better than, let’s say Amazon with its Kindle?
To answer most of your questions we’ve to agree on a couple of things that are happening in the publishing industry today:
- People are reading (or: consuming content) more and more digital content (instead of analogue content).
- People are reading digital content on different devices (smartphone, laptop, iPad)
- What kind of content people consume depends more and more on their social network. Newspapers, magazines and other publishers are not the only ‘guide to relevance’ anymore and will have to earn their place in the new circle of trust of the consumer. This circle of trust is dominated by friends and people with the same interests.
- As a result to the new ‘social guide to relevance’ and the nature of the internet people are not consuming content from a couple of sources, but hundreds of them. They don’t stick to a certain publisher , nor are they willing to pay for something that is also available for free on the internet.
- On the internet there is no limitation to the content format (text, video, photo, audio). Newspapers for instance tend to publish in text and photo’s, but on the internet they can also publish in video or audio. This means that on the internet newspaper A is not only in competition with newspaper B, but also with a range other content providers (television companies, blogs, magazines, Facebook, Twitter, etc, etc)
- On the internet there is a widespread availability of content. News is far from scarce: a simple fact based article on what happend today is worth zero to nothing.
To get back to your question: nowadays people consume different kinds of (digital) content from different kind of sources. At one moment a person might read an article from his local newspaper, the next moment he’s watching a video that his friend posted on Facebook.
An iPad is the best device (at this moment) to consume digital content. It has his shortcomings (you can’t read it on the beach in the sun, but apart from that: it has enough battery life for a day, a clear full color display and is very easy to use. Compared to the Kindle that you can only use for a certain content format (text) it has almost no limitations when it comes to content formats.
But in the world of tablets the hardware will become a commodity very fast. The iPad is very powerful because of the app universe, the user experience (the iOS), the integration with the cloud and one click payments.
How do you evaluate the newspapers and magazines in the iPad? Could you find any good initiatives? This sector is still a bit monolithic in your opinion or is it changing?
There are some good examples in terms of usability and new content formats. Most of the times I see paper formats stuffed in a hip iPad format (or worse: PDF’s that you can pay for).
Is see an industry in search of a new business model. I have no answer, but I think that it has to be solved on a macro (distribution and payment) level and can not be changed by an individual publisher. In the end we will have a system that is partly free (we’ll pay with our profiles and get relevant content and relevant advertisements in return), we’ll maybe pay a (flat) fee for quality content (a Spotify kind of model) and pay per cup / item for high quality premium content (eg: a new movie / documentary, in depth article)- If you want to have a glimpse of the future of publishing: download Flipboard and read online articles with Read it Later or Instapaper. From a publisher perspective this is not the kind of future that you hoped for maybe. Publishers will have to realize themselves that in a digital age they will no longer be in control of the user interface, distribution and payment of their content anymore.
I see an industry that is stuck but willing to change: There is not enough vision. Then again: it will take a Google, Facebook or Apple to fix it. (I think it will be Google, because of search and open approach to technology)
Here in Brazil (also in the USA), there is a growing movement of publishers trying to fight the Apple’s business model – going further than the 30% of each transaction, but questioning the aggressive centralization (particularly after Newsstand in the iOS 5). Who do you think is going to win this struggle?
It will probably take another ten years before there is a new equilibrium in publishing and content consuming. Hardware, software, content, consumer behavior and regulation (laws) are all moving targets. HTML 5 (the open alternative to ‘closed native apps’) will be a game changer and soon there will be no difference between a native app and a web app (the future will be hybrid with synchronization between local and cloud) . App and content stores will only be another distribution channel, but hard to go around, because they come with the hardware.
As I said before: publishers will be less in control over distribution and user interface of their content : therefore content production can be cheaper (and 30% might not be such a bad deal when you don’t have to bother about distribution and payments).
In the end quality content is going to win, the reader is going to win. But first we need a holistic approach to distribution, user interface and payment. I think Google has a better starting point then Apple. They are running behind, but they ‘own’ some key elements of the game: search and distribution (a lot of RSS feeds come from Feedburner: a Google company). Google One Pass could be a better system then Apple ID because content can still be available for search engines (Google) and it is a system that is not limited to a certain device. (you can use it on an iPad, PC or Android device).
Is it possible to claim that we are seeing the first steps in the publishing business of what happened in the music industry with iTunes and iPods? In other words, will Apple bring much needed source of revenue for that sector (with a digital massification) but, at the same time, controlling with iron fists this same new market?
Yes, partly: the revenue stream for publishers will be in digital and Apple will be one of the key players. But a lot of publishers will not survive (mainly because of the fact that they produce content that we don’t need anymore or do not want to pay for anymore). When publishers ‘owned’ media content was scarce and expensive. From a 2011 perspective that content is too expensive. It is the same for music.
The future of monitization of digital content is in access not in ownership. Cheap content (content that is widely available and not very unique) will be free, quality content will be available with flat fee (macro) subscriptions (the Spotify model) and we will only pay per item for some really unique and scarce content (the latest movies, an in depth article, a new book, etc).
How do you see Android in tablet? Do you think that it will indeed challenge and overthrow Apple (as happened with IBM PC against Macintosh) or it will be just an alternative (as any mp3 player is for the iPod)?
As I said before: I think the tablet is not such a revolutionary device from a hardware perspective. It will become a commodity very fast (they will have to fix the problem of using a tablet outside in the sun). The products start on a mature level of their lifecycle. (there are not so many reasons to replace a tablet for a new one as there are for replacing a smartphone for instance).
This year the tablet is exiting, next year it will probably be television. The winner is a player that excels in the integration of all those devices. Apple is the only company that translates the consumer needs of the 21st century into simple and elegant devices, software and distribution/business model. This will not be overthrown easily. Android is too nerdy, too technical; but if Google is a smart follower their open approach will definitely be a challenger to Apple (especially governments and publishers will like the open approach more and they are key stakeholders in this new game).
