The New York Times was a bullet point in the iPad introduction. The application they had already developed looked quite nice from a cursory glance, particularly with its lack of advertising. The Apple Gazette recently discussed the pricing conundrum they are having at NYT.
There have also been rumors that most of the Times’ content is going to go back behind the pay wall. Assuming that is the case, I think there’s an obvious strategy for moving forward with their iPad pricing.
Initial price: $10, and that covers 3 months of content. Get everyone hooked! After that start charging $10/month. Also, strategize how you might include minor and strategic advertising content into the app. Possibly set up a new pricing scheme for advert-less versions.
Also, make sure you build in a “you can’t buy next month’s content until you upgrade the app to the newest version available – it’s free”. This would enable you to enforce any new restrictions you add to the app and keep the majority of your customers on the same version.
Of course, I would prefer if it were free. But that’s not how businesses work. If they keep the entry cost low enough, it might be enough to get me back into the daily habit of reading the newspaper again.
That’s interesting, and I agree with your overall strategy. But where did you get the $10 per month price? Is that the current cost of subscribing to the NYT? Do you think an iPad subscription should cost more, less, the same?
The $10 price-point was mentioned in the linked article. The “print” people at the NYT want a $30 price, and the “online” people a $10 – or so it was intimated.
Also, $10 is the price the iPad version of each iWork app.
I assume you mean the 3G monthly cost of $30 “subscription” cost. That’s half the cost of any computer 3G tether service, and all those require contracts. Seems that Apple did the hard sell with AT&T (likely using the iPhone exclusivity) to get the price that low.