This isn’t the 80s anymore. It’s not good enough to just pump out lusty hardware like the Walkman in order to drive generous profit streams. In the modern age of consumer electronics, it takes content and an entire ecosystem of software and services to keep customers locked in and buying your gear. That’s why we’re paying close attention to content deals for the suddenly hot tablet category of devices. Conde Nast has been teasing custom content for next generation tablets for months, lead by mock-ups of its Wired magazine property. So it’s no surprise to hear Charles H. Townsend, president and CEO of Conde Nast say he wants to “take a leadership position,” on Apple’s iPad. According to the New York Times, the company will announce plans today (via an internal company memo) for its first custom iPad digital pubs: the April issue of GQ (there’s already an iPhone app for that), followed by the June issues of Wired and Vanity Fair, and then The New Yorker and Glamour sometime in the summer. This first cut represents a broad swath of demographics as Conde Nast trials Apple’s newest platform in order to see what works. We should also expect a variety of prices and advertising models during the initial experimentation period. Also noteworthy is Conde Nast’s two-track development approach: the iPad version of Wired will be developed with Adobe (as we heard) but the others will be developed internally — all the digital mags will be available via iTunes although Wired will also be made available in “non-iTunes formats.” Assuming it finds a model that works, then Conde Nast plans to digitize other magazines in the fall.

Conde Nast stakes out ‘leadership position’ on iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether you love it or loathe it, there is now no way to deny the spectacular success of Apple’s iTunes Store. The proprietary digital media player, organizer and salesperson has just now recorded its 10 billionth song download, marking a truly unique achievement in the still nascent world of digital distribution. Congratulations to Apple, whose response has been to thank you all for spending so much cash and making El Steve look like the techno pied piper. Hit the source link to find out what the most downloaded songs of “all time” were… you might not be surprised by the top three, but you should definitely be horrified.

Apple serves up 10 billionth iTune, smiles all the way to the bank originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has doubled the download cap for media downloaded on the iPhone over the 3G network.

Before, iPhone owners could not download apps or iTunes media surpassing 10MB in size over the 3G network. A message would appear instructing users to connect to Wi-Fi to perform the download. Now that limitation has been increased to 20MB, according to our testing and multiple independent reports.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the change. Some theorize the cap was increased in advance of the release of the iPad tablet, whose games will likely be considerably larger in file size. The iPad is due for release in late March.

See Also:

• Wondering Why You Can’t Pre-Order an iPad? It Isn’t Legal Yet …
• Analysis: Apple Bunts on iPad Gaming
• Ten Things Missing From the iPad
• Hands-On With the Apple iPad
• Apple iPad Raises the Stakes for E-Readers
• Can Apple’s iPad Save the Media After All?

Via iPhone Savior

Publishers joining Apple’s iBooks store are turning their back on Amazon and its vision of the flat $9.99 ebook. Apple forced the music industry to charge 99 cents per song, so why are they helping publishers set their own prices?

To screw Amazon.

The difference between Amazon and Apple is this: Amazon is very much in the ebook business to sell ebooks. They want you attached to their platform. That’s why the Kindle Reader is on both PC and iPhone, as well as the eponymous e-ink device. Ebooks are huge for them. They sell six ebooks for every 10 physical books. That’s why they want to own the market. Apple, on the other hand, sells content in order to sell hardware. The iTunes Store, the App Store and the brand-new iBooks Store exist so you’ll buy iPods, iPhones and iPads, which is where Apple really makes money. iTunes revenue is just a bonus, though an ever fatter one with the explosion of the App Store.

You can see that the two companies place far different values on the content they sell. A more illustrative example: Amazon has been selling books at a loss—paying $15 for a hardcover bestseller, only to turn around and sell it for $10 on the Kindle. Apple would never, ever sell content at a loss. They make a decent bit of change, but apps and music are really just a way to fill up your iPhone.

Do you remember three years ago, when Apple was battling with the record labels for control over (legal) digital music? Apple still owns 69 percent of the market and sell 1 out of every 4 songs, period—in other words, they owned the market, which deeply frightened the labels, who were afraid of losing control. Universal, the biggest label, flipped out, and even tried to build the anti-iTunes. That failed, so the music business bit the bullet (or the poison pill) and went DRM-free, not with Apple at first, but with Amazon. It became a (sorta) credible competitor to the iTunes monster, long enough to give the labels just enough extra negotiating power. When iTunes music downloads went DRM free, many of them—particularly hit singles—suddenly cost $1.29.

The situation is remarkably similar, except this time, Amazon’s wearing the market-maker pants. Some estimate Amazon’s share of the ebook market to be 90 percent, but I’ve heard from people in the publishing industry say it’s closer to 80 percent. But that’s nitpicking. At this moment, Amazon owns ebooks. The book publishers’ fears are the same as the record labels with iTunes: They’re paranoid about losing control over pricing, and their own digital destiny. They’re worried that books are being undervalued, and that once people have the mindset that the price of an ebook is $9.99, and not a penny more, they’re doomed. They needed an insurgent player: Apple.

Apple has advantages that Amazon didn’t have with music: Scale and technology. iTunes has just moved 3 billion iPhone apps. Apple’s sold over 250 million iPods. By contrast, Amazon’s sold an estimate 2.5-3 million Kindles since it debuted 2 years ago. Analysts predict Apple will sell twice as many iPads this year alone.

In terms of technology, e-Ink looks old and busted and slow next to the iPad’s bright, color display. (Even the fact that the written word is much easier to stare at for long periods of time when presented on e-ink won’t save the current Kindle.) An iPad can do more than books: Beautiful digital magazines, interactive textbooks, a dynamic newspaper. Oh, and it’s a computer that does video, apps, music. Amazon’s scrambling now to make a multitouch full color Kindle after betting on E-Ink, but that kind of development takes at least a year. Even if they churn out a full color reader that is somehow better than the iPad, it likely won’t matter: It would just be a very nice reader to iPad’s everything else, and it would be 9 months too late.

The print industry is swirling down the toilet, and apocalypse-era publishers minds’ dance with hallucinations of digital salvation via iTunes for print. It’s the iPod for books. What Amazon was supposed to deliver, but now maybe never will.

With that contrast in mind, all the publishers needed was a little push. All Apple had to whisper was, “Hey, we’ll let you set your own prices for books. You should control your own destiny. We’d love to have you. You know, $12.99 is a really good price for a beautiful color version of your amazing books. BTW, why are you letting Amazon undersell you?” It doesn’t matter that publishers make less absolute money through the agency model used by Apple—Amazon might’ve given them $15 for a book it sold for $10, but under the agency model, the seller takes 30 percent off the top. They wanted to feel in control, and that their books are worth something more. Steve gave them that, even as he’s probably got his fingers crossed behind his back.

Amazon knew what it was doing by insisting on $9.99 as the price for ebooks. A flat, easy-to-understand rate—one that’s notably cheaper than its analog counterparters—is a paradigm that works, especially when you’re trying to essentially build a whole new market. It plays into the part of our brains that like easy things. That likes the number 9. (No really, 9 is a psychologically satisfying number.) Amazon believed in it so strongly, as I said before, they sold books at a loss to keep it up. (I’m not suggesting, BTW, that Amazon would be any more benevolent to the industry than Apple. They wouldn’t.)

Price would’ve been Amazon’s major advantage over Apple too—being able to undercut Apple by setting whatever price they needed to compete would’ve been its ace in the hole against the iPad’s flashy color screen, and everything else it can do. And now that’s poofed. Apple will be able to sell you ebooks for the exact same price as Amazon. By turning the publishers against Amazon, they’ve effectively dicked the Kindle over. Why? To fill out another bullet point as to why you should buy an iPad. The real question is how long it’ll take publishers to realize that’s all they are to Apple: one little bullet point.

The Apple tablet could change everything. That’s what people are hoping for, revolution. But revolutions don’t actually happen overnight, especially if you’re talking about turning around an entire diseased, lumbering industry, like publishing.

The medium is the message, supposedly. The iPod was a flaming telegram to the music industry; the iPhone, a glowing billboard about the way we’d consume software. The Apple tablet? Possibly no less than the reinvention of the digital word. If you look very generally at the content that defined the device—or maybe vice versa—the iPod danced with music, the iPhone’s slung to apps and, as we were first in reporting a few months ago, the tablet’s bailiwick might very well be publishing.

Since then, the number of publishers—of newspapers, magazines and books—reported to be talking to Apple has exploded: NYT, Conde Nast, McGraw Hill, Oberlin, HarperCollins, the “six largest” trade publishers, and Time, among many others, are making noise about splaying their content on the tablet. A giant iPod not only for video, photos and music, but for words. That’s what they’re lining up to make ritual sacrifices for. Publishers want this, whatever it is.

I say “whatever it is,” because, for all of the talk and pomp and demos, they haven’t seen the Apple tablet. They don’t know what it’s like. They don’t know how to develop for it. As Peter Kafka’s reported, neither Conde Nast (publisher of Wired) nor Time will be ready to show anything for the tablet on Wednesday, much less a mindblowing reinvention of the magazine, because Apple’s keeping them at arm’s length. (Why? Secrecy, which matters far more than launch partners. All the leaks about the tablet have come out of third parties, like the goddamn publishers, so Apple’s not telling them much more than they are the rest of us.)

The sole exception, that we know of, is the New York Times. The Gray Lady has a team of three developers embedded in Cupertino. This makes a certain kind of sense, given the content the tablet is framing, and which publisher is currently best suited to delivering that content in a new experience.

When it comes to experimenting with the display and digestion of the digital word, the NYT has aggressively been the most innovative major publication on the web: Just look at the incredible infographics, the recently launched NYT Skimmer and the NYT Reader. Logically, they’re the print publication perhaps most able to realize the early potential of a device that’s essentially a window for displaying content. And it doesn’t hurt that Apple loves the NYT.

The tablet might just be a big iPhone, but the key word is “big.” What defines the tablet in opposition to the iPhone is the screen size, less than any kind of steroidal shot to processing muscle. A 10-inch screen will hold 10 times the screen real estate of the iPhone’s 3.5-inch display. That’s room for ten fingers to touch, navigate and manipulate, not two. Real estate for full web pages, for content apps that are so much more than news repackaged for a pocket-sized screen. The ability to really “touch what you want to learn about” is an “inflection point for navigation,” that is, the potential to truly “navigate serendipitously,” as the NYT’s media columnist David Carr put it to me.

Think of it as a more tangible version of the force that drives you from a Wikipedia page about gravity to one about the geological history of the planet Vulcan, touching and feeling your way through everything from a taxonomy for Star Wars fanboys to the Victoria’s Secret catalog.

The Wikipedia example might be particularly apt, actually. If we use iPhone history as a guide, given that the tablet is likely to be an evolution of the iPhone software and interface, it’s likely these publications will be content “apps” that will be islands unto themselves: So it might be easy to wander all over the NYT’s island via the tips of your fingers, but not so easy to float off to the WSJ’s abode. At least to start, we assume it’ll much like iPhone apps. For all of the very whizzy Minority Report wannabe demos from Sports Illustrated, we don’t know what the content apps are actually going to look like, or what they’ll be able to do on the tablet. In particular, what is it they’ll be able to do that they couldn’t do on the web right now, given how powerful the web and web applications have become over the last couple of years? (Look at everything Google’s doing, particularly in web apps.) The question, as NYU Journalism professor Mitch Stephens told me, is whether the tablet’s capabilities can “actually get the Times and Conde Nast to think beyond print?”

If you think the newspaper and magazine industry is slow, the book industry is prehistoric. As whipped into a fervor as HarperCollins and McGraw Hill may be about jumping aboard the full color Apple tablet express to carry them into a new age of print with “ebooks enhanced with video, author interviews and social-networking applications,” past the Amazon schooner, they take years to move. And they’re likely in just as in the dark as everybody else.

There’s also the macro issue that it just takes time for people to figure shit out. Think about the best, most polished iPhone apps today. Now try to remember the ones that launched a week after the App Store opened. It’s a world of difference. New media, and how people use them, aren’t figured out overnight. Or fade back to the internet circa 2006. Broadband wasn’t exactly new then, but so much of the stuff we do now, all the time—YouTube, Twitter—wasn’t around.

The apparent readiness to yoke the fortunes of the sickly publishing industry to Apple, and its tablet, oozing out of info scraps and whispers, like a publishing executive telling the NYT that, versus Amazon, “Apple has put an offer together that helps publishers and, by extension, authors,” is deeply curious. The publishing industry wants the iPod of reading, but they’ve clearly forgotten the music industry’s traumatic experience when they got theirs. Apple basically wrested control of legal digital music, and the music industry got far less than they wanted to make up for it. Hollywood, in turn, played their hand far differently, scattering bits of movies and TV shows across tons of services, so no one had any leverage, especially not Apple. (Hence, Apple’s negotiations for a subscription TV service with Disney or CBS always seem delicate at best.) I don’t know why Apple would be any more magnanimous with publishers than record labels, given the chance to be gatekeeper.

The gatekeeper matters, because it dictates the answer to publishing’s current crisis: “How we gonna get paid?” The NYT is bringing back metering to its website; book publishers weep over the fact that Amazon has decided books are worth precisely $9.99. Publishers want to control their financial destiny. Apple wants to control every element of the experience on their devices. (Apparently, they’ll get to.) I want to be able to read the NYT, WSJ, The New Yorker, Penthouse and Wired, in all of their dynamic, interactive, multitouch glory easily and cheaply. Ads might be the secret to making that possible. Ultra targeted, innovative ads designed just for the tablet. At least, in the future—Apple’s acquisition of mobile ad firm Quattro, and its CEO’s ascension to VP, have happened too recently to bear much fruit yet.

Point being, there’s a lot of stuff publishers have to figure out, from the big stuff to the little stuff. Apple hasn’t exactly sped up the process by giving them much to work with, either, but for one publisher that we know of—and maybe a couple we don’t. The tablet might change the digital word the way the iPod changed digital music. But it’ll take some time.

Thanks to Joel for that awesome render; original CC printing press image from JanGlas/Flickr