Since the Magazine Industry’s Savior — whoops, I meant Apple’s iPad — has been in the marketplace for four months now — it’s time to see how that savior thing is working out for it. While I’d be the first to tell you that being saved is always a work in progress, a look at the top grossing apps in the iPad app store — and user comments — yields two inescapable, and perhaps interrelated, truths:
1. Based on the iTunes’ stores list of top growing downloads, consumers see the iPad much more as a gaming and productivity tool than a way to consume magazines.
2. Pricing for magazine apps is too high for many customers to stomach. Consumers seem keenly aware of how little they pay per issue if they subscribe to a print version of the magazine, and don’t want to pay prices (which are usually per issue and not per app) that are the same as, or exceed, the newsstand price. BNET