I can’t wait to get an iPad. I genuinely believe it’s going to be as transformative to my life as the iPhone has been. The iPhone has allowed me to stay connected to people and given me constant access to the information I crave; all while liberating me from the cumbersome notebook. Yet, the iPhone has one, very frustrating limitation; it’s not quite “there” yet.
By “there” I mean it’s still a little too slow, both in connection and browser speeds, its screen is teeny-tiny and of course, no Flash. Certainly there are other frustrating limitations, but for me, being able to comfortably read my RSS feeds, or surf the web, or watch a movie, or write a post while being in the same room as my family is crucial. In that regard, the iPhone has been a blessing.
Enter the iPad. Its boasts greater speed, a larger screen and is much lighter and less clumsy than a notebook, which for me is a huge selling point. I’m expecting to be able to do all of the things that I want to do on my iPhone today without roasting my thighs like I would with a notebook.
Great (or Unrealistic) Expectations
While I’m reasonably confident that my expectations for the iPad will be met, the publishing industry’s expectations for the iPad, and for tablet computing in general, just aren’t realistic. In the past few weeks as the release date for the iPad nears, the Internet has been buzzing with stories about how the iPad will be the savior of the newspaper and magazine business (see here or here for some examples). Although there are many reasons for the optimism, one big reason can be demonstrated by this video.
VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread – iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.
Pretty cool, isn’t it? When the iPad comes out we’re going to see a lot of experiments like this and it will absolutely create a lot of excitement. And it won’t last.
Back to Reality
According to figures just released by the Newspaper Association of America, advertising revenue fell 27%, or more than $10 billion since 2008, and is down a staggering 44% from more than $47 billion from its peak in 2005 (although these are newspaper industry figures, the magazine industry is in the same boat). All this begs the question; how can an industry so starved for money pay for such lavish productions?
What do I mean? The following is a ‘behind-the-scenes’ video that shows the production of the demo video above. Pay attention to what you see in the background.
VIV Mag Featurette: A Digital Magazine Motion Cover and Feature for the iPad from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.
Did you notice all those people standing around and all that fancy equipment? That’s money being spent, and lots of it. We’ll be seeing a lot of this sort of thing over the next few quarters. Unfortunately, except for the largest media companies or those publishers with a little extra money to burn, this sort of thing is going to go away pretty quick if it doesn’t quickly attract a lot of new subscribers and new advertisers.
To be sure, your neighbor’s kid may have posted a nice video on YouTube and with the tools available today you can make a pretty snazzy video or multimedia production on a pretty small budget. Nevertheless, to get the kind of production quality in the above video, it’s going to cost more money than most publishers will be willing to spend in the long run.
So, is this a New Paradigm, or What?
All this reminds me of the heyday of the dot com bubble. Remember when companies were spending ever increasing sums of money on every new multimedia technology that was introduced? Anything that could make your website look just a little more spectacular than your competitor’s was a must have. The result was a lot of great experimentation, some cool websites, a lot of terrible websites and a few truly useful technologies. But will this lead to a paradigm shift?
One thing that the publishing industry is hoping (praying) for is that the iPad (and tablet computing) will free publishers from the “freemium” paradigm where most web sites have been locked for years. Indeed, services like Apples’ iTunes and the App Store are finally acclimating people to pay for content. The hope is that the iPad will offer “premium” content of superior quality at a reasonable price that people will finally pay for in mass.
To some extent, this will happen. The question is if manufacturers can sell enough iPads (and other tables) to enough people who will pay for enough premium content to make this model work. That ultimately depends on the economy and until it recovers sufficiently to support this brave new world, publishers will actually face yet another challenge. Not only will they have to decide how to continue operating on ever decreasing revenues, but now they have to figure out how to build even more sophisticated online operations in order to provide attractive content to their savior; the iPad.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
About Neal Wiser
