Recognizing tablets and mobile e-readers as promising vehicles for news distribution, a recent gathering of publishers and digital platform experts considered how to exploit that potential.
Arriving from 40 countries, approximately 260 participants — three times last year's turnout — attended the third World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) International E-Reading and Tablets Conference. Media professionals from Honduras to Hong Kong, India to Israel made the trip last week to Hamburg, Germany.
Recapping the conference, WAN-IFRA quoted Forrester Research Consumer Product Analyst Nick Thomas saying, "You can't compare the fun experience that the iPad provides to a black-and-white e-reading device. But if no single e-reader beats the iPad today, collectively they all do. The demand for tablet PCs will be broader and faster-growing than e-readers, but e-readers have a future as a single-function device for reading e-books, magazines and newspapers".
Conference moderator Kristina Sabelström Möller, WAN-IFRA senior research manager for emerging digital platforms and business development, said "mobile e-reading is about having a complete ecosystem for many e-reading products and many target groups, with a totally consumer-oriented technology running behind it."
Consumers may resist paying for online news, but not for receiving news on mobile devices, particularly for single copies at newsstand prices for print editions. And subscriptions? Forrester found U.S. mobile readers willing to pay a third the print-subscription price; a market test in Switzerland found mobile readers there looking for up to half print's price; and, according to News International Digital Solutions Director Darren Goldsby, British mobile readers were ready to pay almost 70% of print's price for a 30-day subscription to The Sun on Apple's iPad.
Strong advertising has allowed more than 900,000 free USA Today iPad downloads, but "people will pay for content on mobile platforms," Gannett Digital Ventures' Craig McKinnis told the conference, adding that the newspaper has had success with paid content on the Amazon Kindle.
An important consideration of the conference, according to WAN-IFRA was the potential for tablet and mobile delivery to overcome the Web publishing's shortfall in meeting the level of print-generated revenue needed to sustain adequate news reporting operations. Besides convenient access to worthwhile content, speakers emphasized the need for easy payment for news on the go.
As for advertising, McKinnis worried that new devices with seven-inch screens could diminish tablet apps' appeal to advertisers.
For a copy of WAN-IFRA's report on the conference, contact Senior Program Manager Christiane Schmidt at e-mail christiane.schmidt@wan-ifra.org
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