iPad Magazine Apps With Subscriptions Show Up in App Store
By 
Apple did not waste anytime. Yesterday, we talked about Apple’s announcement for its App Store subscriptions, which brings you new content that can be paid automatically through your iTunes account. Now, hours later, we are starting to see iPad magazine apps showing up in the App Store already leveraging Apple’s new and controversial billing system. All of this before the public release of iOS 4.3.
Publications such as Elle, Popular Science+ and Nylon for iPad are some of the first apps that joined The Daily with the new Apple subscriptions feature. The new subscription apps rely on weekly, monthly and yearly payments.
After you confirm your new subscription, all apps will display the confirmation window before billing your iTunes account. As mentioned above, there is a privacy policy alert that reads: “The publisher would like your name, email and ZIP code so they can send you messages about related products in accordance with their privacy policy.” Remember, that is only a “opt-in” option. Keep in mind that Apple is the one processing your payments, which means that your private data won’t be shared with the publishers unless you decide to do so.
As expected, each publisher seems to be exploring a different business model with subscribers. For example, my wife signed up for Elle, and the application offers you three different subscriptions with different durations. Elle offers a single issue option, which is offered with a high price tag ($3.99) compared to the subscription options. Elle also offers a monthly subscription and a 1-year subscription. A very interesting feature and a nice touch by the magazine Elle, is the option to get free digital copies as long as you provide your subscriber code from your print subscription.
Different from Elle’s app, Popular Science+ has decided to offer you a single issue and a 1-year subscription option.
Publishers are probably not to happy with Apple’s new subscription model. By forcing the “in-app” subscriptions feature, Apple retains a 30% cut from all transactions, while the publishers keep 70%. In addition, publishers cannot include links to other web stores from within their apps. I guess that we could consider the free digital copies access to existing print subscribers a plus.
We will have to wait and see how this new subscription model works for Apple. Stay tuned.
