Newspaper Publishes Still Hope Tablets Will Save Them [Tablets]

The NYT, WSJ and USA Today , are building special tablet-y apps for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab , hoping to easily port the app over to other Android tablets. And the WSJ, knowing its core audience, wants all up on the BlackBerry PlayBook .

There’s somewhat tit-for-tat occurring, the WSJ reports, saying that ” Every so often, device makers are talking about advertising their devices in certain publications, in exchange for publishers agreeing to build an application for them.” In other words, tablet makers need content for their devices, so that they ‘re offering to indirectly pay publishers to build apps. And publishers need money as ad revenues have shrunk, that is why they’re trying to tablets for salvation within the first place.

According to the WSJ, the NYT app shall be pre-loaded on ” certain” Galaxy Tabs-maybe on one carrier versus another, since it’s coming to all four major carriers within the US-and it’ll be free in the course of the end of the year, similar to the entire-blown app when it hits the iPad by the tip of this year. Currently, the NYT Editor’s Choice app for iPad only offers a limited selection of articles, as a result of its relatively short development time. The entire app, which we hear is going to be a whole lot like the current Times Reader on the desktop when it launches in a couple months, will start costing money next year. (If it launches soon on the iPad, it’ll probably work like the WSJ’s current subscription-required iPad app, unlike the mag subscriptions Apple is negotiating over at this time .)

There’s still a ways to move for publishers and tablets on the subject of replacing good print. Publishers have got to wring more cash out of digital content-via ads, subscriptions, whatever-but in addition they have to deliver more compelling experiences concurrently. It’s somewhat crazy to me that, as much as I admire magazines, my favorite reading experience on the iPad remains to be Instapaper, that’s basically straightforward text. [ WSJ ]

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This post is tagged: core audience, development time, digital content, print publishers, reading experience, subscriptions