Hearst says it is on track to reach one million paying subscribers to its digital editions in 2012, fuelled by the rise in people paying for content on tablets.

The details above were shared by David Carey, president of Hearst in the sourced paid content.org article.

Is this really something to be proud of? Growth is always good, but if these are the numbers of one the biggest magazine publishers on the planet are posting — clearly the current digital business model has an uphill battle. 

That million paying digital subscribers figure apparently covers all platforms including Android and iOS. UBS analyst Maynard Um has predicted conservative sales to top 28 million for the iPad and 52 million for the iPhone in 2011 alone. Gaining a foothold on only 1.25% of all eligible devices sold by Apple in 2011 doesn’t seem to indicate that current digital mag solutions are a ringing success. It’s not even worth adding on Android goliath numbers.

Big publishing better hope that quoted 10 to 15% monthly growth rate keeps up, or start looking for a different solution. 

Source: paidcontent.org

“This might not kill sneakernet dead, but it’s certainly a major blow — and a welcome feature in an age where it’s easier to steal a song from some server in Sweden than to share a Word doc with the person sitting next to you.”

“Still, I think there’s something basically false about Apple’s “Back to the Mac” spiel for Lion: people like iOS because it’s simple, straightforward and obvious. Those aren’t things you can necessarily engineer into an already extensive and complicated desktop OS. Or at least if you can, Apple hasn’t figured it out yet. Ultimately I really like Lion, and I look forward to using it as my primary OS, but the learning curve was no shallower than any other version of OS X I’ve used in the past decade. “Gestures” and “simple” aren’t necessarily the same thing.”

Great thoughts from Paul Miller, of this is my next on Mac OS X Lion

Source: thisismynext.com

Now, here’s why iCloud, iOS 5 and Lion pack such a deadly punch against so many companies: Together, they strengthen Apple’s lock-in strategy with vertical integration. Many consider Apple to be the most vertically integrated company in the world: All Apple hardware and software are designed in-house, and Apple also runs its own digital content store, iTunes, along with the App Store and iBooks store.

The new features in iOS 5, iCloud and Lion tightens Apple’s vertical integration of its software ecosystem by amplifying its “lock-in” goal. The vast majority of the new iCloud tools introduced Monday are exclusively for Apple customers, designed to bridge the iOS and Mac operating systems to make the experience more seamless, convenient and irresistible than ever.

Brian X Chen’s analysis of the impact of Apple’s WWDC announcement. The man’s right on the money, but this is just another step in a plan Apple has followed for years.  

Source: Wired