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| Apple is planning to launch its news subscription service in 2019. Photo: REUTERS/Stephen Lam |
By Ken Manbert Salcedo, International Business Times - Business
Apple is reportedly planning to launch its own premium news subscription service. The service will reportedly be integrated in the updated version of the Apple News app, which is believed to launch sometime in 2019.
Last month, Apple announced that it was acquiring Texture, the digital magazine subscription service by Next Issue Media LLC. Texture lets users subscribe to over 200 magazines for a monthly fee of $9.99, which is why it’s dubbed as the “Netflix for magazines.” Apple will put the acquisition to good use by integrating it into the Apple News app, as reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Shortly after Apple’s acquisition of Texture, Apple laid off about 20 Texture staff members, according to one of Bloomberg’s sources. The remaining Texture employees are now part of the Apple News team. This very same team is the one that’s currently building the new premium subscription service for Apple.
Sources say that when the news subscription service launches next year, a portion of the subscription revenue will go to magazine publishers that are part of the program. There’s currently no information on how much the magazine publishers will get from the subscription revenues.
Apple previously had a dedicated news app called Newsstand, which allowed users to subscribe to magazines and newspapers individually. In 2015, that app was renamed simply as News and it followed the same business model. If Apple is able to launch its premium subscription service, it could bolster News app usage and generate new stream of revenue for the company much like Apple Music, which has a $9.99 per month subscription.
Paid subscriptions already play a huge part in Apple’s ecosystem. The company currently sells subscriptions for iCloud storage and Apple Music. Apple also gets a 15 percent cut from the subscription revenues that are being sold by third-party apps through the App Store, as pointed out by TechCrunch.
Launching a news subscription service seems to be right up the company’s alley and it could turn Apple News into the new “Netflix for magazines.”
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