App wars begin
Less than a week after it emerged that Rupert Murdoch was planning to launch the Daily, an iPad only newspaper from his News Corps headquarters in New York, Virgin Group boss Richard Branson has announced he too intends to exploit Apple’s ‘Jesus Tablet’ with an app-only magazine product.
Virgin is set to unveil its new app magazine next week which they describe as a ‘revolutionary multimedia’ paperless publication designed specifically to utilise the features of the iPad.
Details of the magazine remain sketchy, including its name. In some documentation the publication has been referred to as Project, but on other occasions it has been called Maverick.
Although it is thought that the product won’t offer a daily news digest, commentators have immediately drawn a comparison between Virgin’s latest innovation and Rupert Murdoch’s iPad only newspaper, the Daily, which is set to launch within a month. As early adopters of this technology, they will become natural competitors, even though they don’t offer exactly the same style of product.
Murdoch is thought to have invested as much as $30 million into his US-centric paperless newspaper which will employ more than a hundred journalists. Murdoch’s product will also benefit from a close technical relationship with Apple, which should see its iTunes store stock being rated pretty high on launch.
It is understood that Branson’s magazine product will offer a more light hearted take on life, concentrating less on traditional hard news stories and focusing more on entertainment, culture and travel. The project will be spearheaded by his 29-year-old daughter Holly and editorially influenced by the former editor of Arena, Zoo and FHM, Anthony Noguera.
At present Apple report that they’ve sold 7.5 million iPads worldwide since its launch, but with big business names beginning to wade into the app-publishing market, will there soon be more reasons to shell out 500-odd quid for Apple’s latest gadget?
… I’m not convinced, and if you want to know why … read this …
