Apple, News Corp to hold event to launch The Daily
Apple and News Corp sent out invitations on Thursday to press for the launch of the Daily, a newspaper designed specifically for iPads. — According to the invitation received by The Loop on Thursday, News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Daily has been assembling in public for two months: the Steve Jobs–Rupert Murdoch iPad newspaper project surfaced in November 2010, a December report pegged a January launch window, and by mid-January News Corp had committed publicly to a Jan. 19 debut. That date has now slipped — the invitations sent Thursday point to an event next week, with syndicated reporting putting the launch at Feb. 2.
What makes this more than a product announcement is the billing layer: News Corp's app has been reported since November as the first publication built on Apple's new recurring in-app subscription system, meaning the event doubles as the first live test of how Apple charges readers on a publisher's behalf.
First-order effects
- News Corp ships a newspaper with no print edition, distributed solely through the App Store and billed through Apple's subscription system rather than its own circulation infrastructure.
Second-order effects
- Every major publisher watching the event now faces the same fork Murdoch accepted: hand Apple both the billing cut and the subscriber relationship inside iOS, or hold distribution in-house and forfeit the smoothest purchase path on the iPad.
Third-order effects
- If The Daily proves the model, news becomes a storefront category — platform owners set subscription terms while publishers compete on content alone, echoing News Corp's earlier push to charge for aggregated newspaper content online after shelving Project Alesia.
The trend: Newspapers are moving from print and open web toward device-native editions whose subscriptions run through the hardware maker's billing system, with Apple setting the terms of the shift.