Tablet Opportunities for News Publishers: the transformation continues

The digitisation of newspapers is nothing new. We’ve been heading in that direction for years. As Australian futurist Ross Dawson sees it, the iPad is the first step in what will now begin to unfold as a plethora of new devices enabling mobile access to news and entertainment in a fun and attractive format. The iPad’s release marks that transitional moment.

“From a newspaper perspective, you could view the iPad in a number of ways,” Dawson says. “One is that it can provide additional revenue. Another is that you can use it in various ways to protect your existing revenue. Or you could look at it more generally. The iPad itself may not be what saves us, but this is the beginning of what will be a new world of digital mobile delivery of news and newspaper content. As such, we need to be able to use it and play with it and work with it so that, as this thing develops, we’re in the game. But I don’t necessarily believe the iPad itself is going to save the day.”

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“First, digital news was available on a big screen, on people’s desks,” Dawson says. “A little more recently on mobile phones, which are hardly the best way to read a newspaper. There has long been a premise of having a portable device that would be more appropriate for reading news and entertainment. The iPad is the first device that is actually half decent. We always knew that we would get to this point.”

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Dawson believes content for tablets and e-readers needs to be created specifically for those platforms. And must be timely. “Newspapers primarily work on a regular news cycle, be it a daily or some variation on that,” Dawson says. “Clearly that’s meaningless when you have a digital device. Part of it is the degree to which emphasis is on news, where timeliness is the primary driver as opposed to other key aspects of value, such as analysis, context, broader insights, bringing information together. These are the choices for news organisations — focus on timeliness in terms of we have the latest breaking news or will they focus more on the impact? There are choices to be made in how they position themselves in a very connected world.”

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Dawson thinks many tablets will be given away for free within 10 years. “Once you see the manufacturer’s cost of these fall below US$10, which is not as far out as it might seem, then lots
of companies will be prepared to offer them for free in return for being able to provide advertising or financial services, such as a bank,” Dawson says. “The cost of these devices, particularly black-and-white devices such as the Kindle and Nook, could get very low and really take this portable media to a far broader audience.”

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“If you want to be on the iPad, you have to deal with Apple,” Dawson says. “So while media companies may be unhappy about that, they can either take it or leave it. The likely saviour is the Android platform, which is growing apace, certainly in the mobile space. The most recent data shows in the U.S., Android [smartphone] sales are ahead of iPhone sales. The Android is still behind in total market share, but it is selling faster than the iPhone. There are many, many planned releases of Android tablet devices.”

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“If you download a magazine or a newspaper content for access offline, then advertisements can’t be served,” Dawson explains. “If you’re using one of the mobile advertisement serving apps, that’s one of the issues in determining which models you’re going to be able to use.”