USA Today’s new publisher David Hunke regrets not charging for its iPhone application, even though mobile phones and portable electronic reading devices continue to be an opportunity for new revenue sources. With the release of digitl content more and more these days people have resorted to the Internet for their News.
Mobile devices have already started to change the new scene little by little with the availability of rss feeds & big screen multi touch screen on the devices now a days it is much easier to read & get your news.
No wonder USA Today regrets its decision on releasing their iPhone App for Free. According to the Terms & Conditions set by Apple for the AppStore,if an App is released Free the developer can never start to charge for it or make it a paid App. USA Today has a large reader base that could slowly move to getting the news via their iPhones & maybe even some on iPods for which the users will be willing to pay happily. We can understand USA Today’s pain because unfortunately good old newspaper is just not selling like how it use to. In this recession time we hope only the best for USA Today & many other newspapers publishers & further wish them much success.
via Wasington post
“I’m not sure we realized what we had,” he told AP. “I think that’s a value readers will be willing to pay for.” USA Today is not only giving its content away on the iPhone, but also Google’s Android device. The plan was to make money through advertising, such as click-to-call, click-to-maps using the user’s GPS location, and video. But that must not be working out so well. USA Today should think about reclaiming some of its higher-end content that its giving away for free and providing it separately for a monthly subscription, which is a new billing capability that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is rolling out with the 3.0 operating system on June 17. See our sister site paidContent.orgfor more on Hunke’s plans for making money.
