Fairfax to charge for apps Julian Lee September 11, 2010
FAIRFAX Media will soon begin charging readers who want to access its news websites on the go as the media company steps up plans to make people pay for its content.
Four subscription-only iPhone apps for smh.com.au, theage.com.au, brisbane times.com.au and watoday .com.au will be released by the end of the month.
Fairfax - owner of The Age - is expected to charge $2.49 a month for each masthead app, although the company would not confirm the figure. The price would be about half that charged by Fairfax's main rival, News Ltd, for a monthly subscription to The Australian's iPad app.
In a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce in Sydney yesterday, Fairfax Media chief executive Brian McCarthy did not reveal the pricing but said it offered ''terrific value'' and he was confident smartphone users would find it attractive.
Mr McCarthy said that because there were now more than 2 million smartphones in use in Australia, and up to 200,000 iPads were forecast to be sold by the end of the year, ''mobile media'' was an increasing focus for Fairfax.
He said ''creating content, re-editing it, repackaging it and selling it was very much indicative of the strategic direction of the company''.
Users of the iPhone apps can choose the genres of content they want to read, watch videos and customise what appears on their screens. Fairfax insists the experience will be different and superior to that of accessing the news websites through a web browser on a mobile phone, thereby removing the incentive for people to gravitate to free content.
The announcement is another sign Fairfax is pushing hard into charging people for content on mobile devices and, in some cases, on the internet. This week the publisher announced it would charge casual readers of the Good Food Guide $9.99 for a year's subscription to a special website, the same price as the guide's iPhone app, of which more than 20,000 have been sold.
Unlike users of The Australian's iPad app, who are asked each month whether they want to renew their subscription, users of the Fairfax iPhone apps will be able to subscribe in six-month blocks.
