Apple's subscription-based news service in the works
Apple looks set to activate its digital magazine subscription service, Texture, which it acquired in the first quarter of 2018. Through this activation, the tech company is looking to integrate a paid update service into the Apple News app, however no official announcements are expected before spring 2019.
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Apple is also seeking in this case to move as with Apple Music, in which subscribers will pay a monthly fee to gain access to the library of available news titles. However, according to a report by Bloomberg, the publishers involved in Apple's application are concerned that the revenue they will receive in this way will be considerably less than what they would earn if they were to operate autonomously and without having ceded customer control to Cupertino.
In general, Apple has made clear its intention to double business revenue from Services by 2020 and is already on track to achieve this goal by growing revenue from the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud and others.
Going forward, the company is ready to launch in 2019 a series of TV shows of its own production and with original content, which will form the basis of a new video subscription offer. The premium service for the update will work along the same lines, but for print publications.
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According to Bloomberg, Texture had around 200,000 subscribers when its acquisition by Apple was announced in March 2018, with a monthly subscription fee of $10. Prior to its acquisition, the service would have paid participating publishers fees based on the amount of reading time users spent on its content, however it is not yet known if Apple plans to maintain the same fee model. And this, just, ignorance has caused publishers to be concerned about the revenue they will reap.
