James Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., recently told a media
conference in Monaco that tablets will hurt the newspaper business. There are currently
7.5 million tablets in U.S. households. It is expected that almost 20 million
will have been sold worldwide by the end of 2010, and 55 million will have been
sold by the end of 2011.
The good news is that consumers seem to be willing to pay
something for iPad apps, unlike with the Internet where they expect everything
to be free. However, it is still unclear how much they will be willing to pay
and whether that will be enough to cover costs and provide reasonable
compensation for creators.
So far, the prices charged by some publishers seem to be too
high. After some initial success monthly circulation seems to drop
dramatically. Wired had 100,000
downloads on its first issue in June, but by September that had dropped 67% to
33,000.
For more information on what’s happening see followthemedia.com’s
“Tablets
Are Great, But Will They Kill Print?”