Kristine Lowe asks whether declining iPad magazine sales figures reported recently will force media organisations to think harder about how to best utilise the tablet's unique storytelling environment
In his opinion, the newspaper tablet app market so far, certainly in Norway where iPad and Samsung Galaxy were only launched at the end of the year, is a false market.
According to Clementz, this is because lots of media, marketing and PR professionals download media apps to see what they are like, creating an artificial market where sales figures go through the roof once a new app is launched, and then decline just as rapidly as soon as people have satisfied their curiosity with the first edition.
As a consumer, and one who had just moved, I loved how it allowed me to look at bathroom design, say a bath tub, from all different angles, see it in all the different colours it was available in with the touch of a button, and, at least theoretically, put me only two clicks away from actually buying it.
I found this remarkably useful as a consumer, though as a journalist I was slightly troubled by the ramifications for editorial independence.
It demands better editorial planning. It is easy to spend a lot of resources on bells and whistles such as video and interactive graphics, but few magazines have dedicated TV- or interactive teams and you need strict editorial planning to keep costs from ballooning.
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