Apple News+ has seen over 200,000 subscribers already sign up to the iOS news app in the first 48 hours it was available.
Based on anonymous sources cited by the New York Times, more than 200,000 people reportedly signed up for Apple News+ in the first 48 hours after its launch on March 25. That’s more than Texture ever amassed at its most successful point, Texture being the app that Apple acquired and refashioned into the paid version of its existing Apple News product.
With over one billion active iOS devices in use — across smartphones, tablets, and computers — that’s around 0.02% of current Apple consumers signing up to the service. While that may not sound like much, the sheer number of Apple users out there means even a fraction of Apple’s user base results in some big numbers.
It’s worth noting here that Apple News+ will cost $9.99 USD per month after the initial 30-day free trial expires for those customers (and any future subscribers). It will be interesting to see how many of this initial 200,000 or so hang around after the free month ends.
Assuming that everyone who signed up for the free trial ends up subscribing for an entire year, those 200,000 subs would generate $24 million USD in sales for the service per year. But Apple would have to pay as much as 50 percent of that revenue back to the publishers that publish to Apple News, according to the report.
Apple News Plus is effectively a paid upgrade to the free Apple News service, which collates news articles from across the web in a handy iOS interface – but the paid subscription also brings in magazine articles and a host of other content that would be behind paywalls.
Users will gain access to a portion of content from over 300 outlets such as Time Magazine, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and The Los Angeles Times. In Canada, there is access to some digital subscription articles from The Toronto Star.
There are certainly some big omissions from Apple’s new premium news bundle, given that media companies like The New York Times and The Washington Post chose to keep their content outside of this new subscription offering despite an intense lobbying effort from Apple. Nevertheless, the company must surely be pleased with the reception to Apple News+.
