You could read a number of things into this, but Comscore and admob has released a study showing that iPhone and iPod Touch owners use their device more than they read printed newspapers and (for iPhone users) magazines.
Does that stat mean that they read the news on their iPhone? Not necessarily, this finding could simply point to the trend of printed newspaper readership going down and smartphone usage going up.
Having said that, the fact is that after years of mobile newspapers being touted as the way forward despite people having to struggle with WAP (we worked for a client called Mobizines in 2006, which was sadly ahead of its time), the iPhone does finally make reading a paper on the mobile web a reasonably pleasant experience.
According to a CBC piece looking at the growth of iPhone apps, "Suddenly, content owners had the tools to create interfaces more closely tailored to what they had to offer. The result: A newspaper publisher's iPhone application could offer a better way to read its articles than the Web â€" or even print."
Indeed, while charging for web editions of newspapers might be doomed to failure, charging for iPhone versions could work. David Hunke, USA Today's publishers, was recently quoted in saying that he regretted the paper not charging for it's iPhone application: "I'm not sure we realized what we had. I think that's a value readers will be willing to pay for."
- USA Today Publisher Says He Regrets Not Charging for Paper's iPhone App (poynter.org)
- IPhone upgrades could hurt some applications (textually.org)
- 40% of iPhone Users access web more from phone than PC (sociallyminded.co.uk)
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