Should Magazine Publishers Care About the iPhone?
July 27, 2007 by Marcus
Steve Jobs has said that the goal of the iPhone is 1 percent
market-share by the end of 2008. Some analysts have been so taken by the
shimmering device that they’ve bumped it as high as 2.5%.
Now then, here’s a question for all of the content producers
out there. If I were a writer and I came to you and said I had an idea for a
story that 2.5% of your audience would read, would you hire me to write it? Of course not.
Steve Smith from min says, “Even if Apple hits its target of
selling 10 million iPhones in the next year, that still constitutes a pretty
narrow niche of cell-phone users, perhaps too small for most general media to
target with discrete development.”
Perhaps? This is the same Smith whom has historically panned
digital editions, even though many successful publishers move 20% or more of their
audience to the format. We’ll blame Smith’s more gentle treatment of the iPhone
possibilities on the fact that he’s a user of the iPhone – heck, he might be one of the
152 people who get the New Yorker cartoon via his iPhone. 152! Imagine the possibilities.
In the best case scenario, your content can be consumed by
many platforms, offering publishers the ability to publish once, syndicate many
times. After all, that’s what digital editions were originally designed to do.
And at least one digital publisher, Exact Editions, has a digital edition
format that’s looked great on the iPhone since the first bleary-eyed iPhone
user managed to turn his (or her) on (despite the claim last week from another provider that "This is the first time users will see a publisher’s complete magazine, as originally published, on the iPhone."). But designing content or software
specifically for the iPhone seems to be a bit short-sighted – unless you and
Steve Jobs are both happy with 1% market-share.
I would say that if you’re a magazine publisher and you don’t care about the iPhone you will probably not be a magazine publisher for very long. Not because the iPhone’s market share will be so grand, but rather because it, like the ipod before it, will fundamentally change the way we interface with content. If you publish a magazine… and you want to continue in that endeavor… you NEED to make yourself aware of what’s happening not only with the iPhone, but with ALL handheld consumer electronic devices.
Thanks for your opinion, Michael. I agree with you about one thing: publishers need to be aware of what’s happening with all handheld consumer electronic devices.
That being said, I wouldn’t recommend anyone developing solutions or content specifically for one platform. Rather, it makes more prudent sense to ensure your content can be distributed over multiple platforms.
An important consideration in this matter is the idea that most magazine publishers are print people being driven into the online world. Their business models and backgrounds do not allow for "dabbling" into channels with a ceiling of 2% marketshare. New initiatives must have a strong degree of success BEFORE resources have been allocated to them.
As you correctly point out, publishers won’t be publishers "for very long" if they don’t respond. But if you’re calling for a dramatic response, shouldn’t it be directed to something with maximum cross-platform portability?
I don’t think publishers need to formulate an immediate iPhone centered “response” but they most definitely should devote some (small) part of their operation to something akin to R&D… and I don’t think that current marketshare is a wise foundation on which to base that R&D.
The rate of change here is so quick that if you wait until there is significant marketshare to be had or “a strong degree of success BEFORE resources have been allocated” you’ve probably missed the boat. Somebody else… somebody not driven into the online world… somebody not so entangled in what the business was… somebody not stained with ink… SOMEBODY will have stolen your readers and co-opted your community.
Ultimately, the iPhone is important not because of how many people use it, but because of who is using it. The technology, vision and ideas encumbered in that device are going to find their way into all handhelds and before long all “smart phones” will look and feel a lot like the iPhone (much in the same way that most mp3 players today feel a lot like ipods).