New York Times Offers In-App Subscriptions

[InfernoShade]

The only part of Apple's infrastructure that is used for subscriptions is the payment processing, and that is certainly not worth more than a 5% cut, which is in the area of what other payment processing services charge.
The other parts of Apple's infrastructure, the hosting and delivery of apps to customers, is covered by the developers yearly license and the 30% cut of the price of the app, nothing wrong with Apple charging 30% when the infrastructure IS ACTUALLY USED.

Dude, I understand you have a different point of view. We're having the same discussion we had in the Amazon Kindle thread. I really don't want to go all over it again. Fine disagree. That's cool.

But clearly the NYT (and soon most all others) think 30% for subs is fine. They see it Apple's way - Apple should get 30% of all (types still to be clearly defined) transactions that happen due to them and in the context of their device. Sure the 30% might change. But all business see that paying a % to make all this new money they would not be able to may otherwise, is worth it. That's business. You can disagree, if you want. But in the end whatever the percent, all the money Apple makes is to support the infrastructure (app store, marketing, advertising, all the other tech and logistics). There's really no difference.

 

[InfernoShade]

Oh, I'm in agreement with your point. Apple's take of 30% is ridiculous.

Haha, well played man.

But no one with business understanding thinks that. Hell, every app store does this. Google/Android does it too. And all the devs think it makes sense, that they should pay a percent. I've never heard devs ever say they should not have to pay a percent. Ever. It's all the other people, without biz sense, that say it.

Anyway good luck to ya!

 

[ChrisSD]

Haha. Oh NYT, you're so funny with your $20 a month price point to read news that can be found elsewhere. You can stop with the trolling now. You're not that special.

 

[X-GI-Joe]

Mac, iPad, and iPhone access is ok...maybe,,,,but

What would really be worth something is the NYT on AppleTV. Then I could leisurely read the paper without eye strain or stress from my comfy chair, the same place I would read the hard copy if it wasn't such a strain on my eyes, wallet, trip to driveway, missed issues, etc.

An Apple TV version: Now that would be worth paying for, all 46" of it!

 

[cozmot]

Before what? Before Apple introduced in-app subscriptions with the 30% toll? Not if the date in the image you asked me to take a look at is any indication.

The Times had its digital subscription plan in the works long before Apple announced its in-apps subscription policy. The above story states, "These prices are similar to those offered via the Times website, though NYTimes.com offers a $0.99 promotional price for the first month." The Times' website breaks down pricing for website, smartphone and tablet access.

 

[writingdevil]

... But in the end whatever the percent, all the money Apple makes is to support the infrastructure (app store, marketing, advertising, all the other tech and logistics).

The App Store is, at best, a bit above break even, and some business geniuses want it to take a loss on the operation so other companies with products can make a profit?

If an entrepreneur has a competitive idea, then fire up your creativity and go for it, but don't expect a thriving enterprise to fund your start up. Kickstarter is already doing that letting people vote with their dollar about what they want to see developed and rewarding those who the public puts money, not words, in.

Seems like the "why are they taking 30%" crowd is still limping along holding their pitards high (as high as they can get them). The NYT pricing isn't about Apple. Please explain how Apple causes NYT to add on charges for using additional hardware to view the same product, a product which now has a potential audience of millions more who were never buying the hard copy. How much more do you think it costs them to let you view it on your ipad in addition to your iphone? Maybe a better understanding of successful business strategy would be of value.

 

[kjw22x]

Beware of "promotional" rate

The 0.99 promo is for the first four weeks, NOT the first month. And they charge your card well in advance of the 4 week period expiring, so you really have to cancel about 2.5 weeks after subscribing to avoid being charged the ridiculous prices. I only discovered this from going through my credit card statement and realizing that I was charged despite canceling several days before I was due to be billed. I have called support several times, and despite their apologies, I have received no refund, so I have had to dispute the charge.

 

[Lennholm]

The App Store is, at best, a bit above break even, and some business geniuses want it to take a loss on the operation so other companies with products can make a profit?

If an entrepreneur has a competitive idea, then fire up your creativity and go for it, but don't expect a thriving enterprise to fund your start up. Kickstarter is already doing that letting people vote with their dollar about what they want to see developed and rewarding those who the public puts money, not words, in.

Seems like the "why are they taking 30%" crowd is still limping along holding their pitards high (as high as they can get them). The NYT pricing isn't about Apple. Please explain how Apple causes NYT to add on charges for using additional hardware to view the same product, a product which now has a potential audience of millions more who were never buying the hard copy. How much more do you think it costs them to let you view it on your ipad in addition to your iphone? Maybe a better understanding of successful business strategy would be of value.

Do you have any source to back up your claim that the app store is at best just over break even? Seeing the popularity of it and numbers of developers I think it's more likely that it's a HUGE revenue source for Apple. If the App store is not making profit, Apple should charge more for when the developers use it, when they get their developers license and ask Apple to host and deliver their app (this doesn't include subscriptions and in-app purchases, obviously)

 

[Lennholm]

Dude, I understand you have a different point of view. We're having the same discussion we had in the Amazon Kindle thread. I really don't want to go all over it again. Fine disagree. That's cool.

But clearly the NYT (and soon most all others) think 30% for subs is fine. They see it Apple's way - Apple should get 30% of all (types still to be clearly defined) transactions that happen due to them and in the context of their device. Sure the 30% might change. But all business see that paying a % to make all this new money they would not be able to may otherwise, is worth it. That's business. You can disagree, if you want. But in the end whatever the percent, all the money Apple makes is to support the infrastructure (app store, marketing, advertising, all the other tech and logistics). There's really no difference.

So, you've moved from being condecending to people and caliming they have no understanding of business to acknowledging that it's simply a difference of oppinion. Thank you! I'm done with you.

 

[Chaos215bar2]

Blame Apple for that, their rediculous transaction fee of 30% is what created these prices.

Blame Apple for the NY Times charging more (by $0.01) for added iPhone access than for iPhone + web access alone? The NY Times has every right to charge an extra 30% for in-app purchases, but their pricing structure just doesn't make any sense.

It's as if they're saying content in the iPhone app is costing you $15 and they're just throwing in the web access to go with it. Shouldn't it be the reverse? I thought the New York Times was in the business of selling news, not news reader apps.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Dude, I understand you have a different point of view. We're having the same discussion we had in the Amazon Kindle thread. I really don't want to go all over it again. Fine disagree. That's cool.

But clearly the NYT (and soon most all others) think 30% for subs is fine. They see it Apple's way - Apple should get 30% of all (types still to be clearly defined) transactions that happen due to them and in the context of their device. Sure the 30% might change. But all business see that paying a % to make all this new money they would not be able to may otherwise, is worth it. That's business. You can disagree, if you want. But in the end whatever the percent, all the money Apple makes is to support the infrastructure (app store, marketing, advertising, all the other tech and logistics). There's really no difference.

They could also be playing the game thinking that Amazon will force Apple to back down and drop back so they are taking a short term hit to keep subscribers but if things do not change in the next few months they could easily pull the service to be able to subscribe in the App.

 

[caddisfly]

Oh, I'm in agreement with your point. Apple's take of 30% is ridiculous.

it might be ridiculous, except in my case, NYT has been totally incapable of processing subscription payments via paypal. I have tried for months.

First, it was some lame "paypal rejects it because it is only 99 cents"....well, no. My paypal account has no problem with my 69/99 cent itunes purchases and has never had a problem for YEARS.

Second, "oh, it was your bank that rejected the paypal payment because it was only 99 cents".....well no, for the same reason. It is the same account I use for itunes *and* I asked the VP of my bank who saw no rejections on my account and the bank has no lower limits on a debit card type of transaction.

third...then NYT sends me a special offer via email but when you click "paypal" option, the NYT site NEVER REDIRECTS TO THE PAYPAL SITE to allow you to login and confirm payment. Instead, it just says the subscription is active...allows access for 1 or 2 days and then cancels it because of lack of payment from paypal.....which, of course, NYT never went to to complete the transaction.

I spent many an hour and email telling is to their help desk to no avail. Sent them screen shot after screen capture, but it was like talking to a clod of dirt...and a different one each time. I tried it on 5 machines, 4 networks, 5 different browsers and three different OS...same result.

I finally gave up....even when you wanted to be on their side and support what they were doing, they couldn't pull off what thousands of mom and pop websites pull off every day.

...but yet they offered to take my credit card....and I should feel comfortable about that, why?

 

[Gasu E.]

You're incorrect. This pricing plan was in effect before this. Do your research before making claims like this. Take a look: http://bit.ly/iWwDJo

That's a very illogical observation. The Times was well aware of Apple's policies when they announced their pricing 3 months ago. Apple's charges were incorporated into the Times' pricing model.

 

[mward333]

Solution!!

I posted a similar message in another thread when the same discussion about the NY Times. Here's a much less expensive solution for everyone who still wants ALL of the unlimited access.

Order the large print edition of the NY Times. It comes once a week and costs $1.65 per week. I believe that this is the very, very least expensive way to get a print subscription to the NY Times.

It comes with---FREE---the new all digital access, including the nytimes.com and the smartphone and tablet subscriptions, ALL with unlimited content.

I've called the NY Times a couple times during the last year, and they stay committed to offering this plan. You have to call them directly to get this service, but it's easy and very inexpensive if you want all of the digital content. Their phone is:
1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637)

It's just that not many people know about this method because they don't advertise it broadly. I've done it for 5 years, and I continue to get all the digital content, even for smartphone and for tablet. Other people can get this deal too. It works under the new digital vs print structure they introduced earlier this year.

I believe it's the very, very, very cheapest way to go. We've done this since 2006 and will continue to do it now, since it provides a solution to the subscription troubles discussed here.

 

[cozmot]

...but yet they offered to take my credit card....and I should feel comfortable about that, why?

No, you're not supposed to be comfortable about that. It's okay.

 

[cozmot]

That's a very illogical observation. The Times was well aware of Apple's policies when they announced their pricing 3 months ago. Apple's charges were incorporated into the Times' pricing model.

I don't know that the Times and the WSJ knew that Apple was going to treat subscriptions this way, but even if they did, you can't blame Apple for their pricing. The Times' digital subscription rates are essentially the same across smartphone and tablet platforms, i.e., on Androids and Xooms too.

Even if you factor in Apple's 30%, the Times' pricing scheme is illogical. They won't even sell you a subscription to NYTimes.com by itself; they force you to bundle it with your smartphone. So why wouldn't they try to get you to use the website subscription alone, instead of cutting Apple in?

 

[b0blndsy]

Good point, agreed. I appreciate you trying to make people understand. But don't worry there are tons of people who think the 30% should have never been there, Apple should not make any money of other people's sales, and should run the whole infrastructure for free.

Maybe Steve Jobs will disagree on this.

 

[bsolar]

But clearly the NYT (and soon most all others) think 30% for subs is fine. They see it Apple's way - Apple should get 30% of all (types still to be clearly defined) transactions that happen due to them and in the context of their device. Sure the 30% might change. But all business see that paying a % to make all this new money they would not be able to may otherwise, is worth it.

Which "all business"? As far as I understand many other business see it in a completely different way and are not going to adopt Apple's IAP at all. The NYT App is the biggest one which adopted it until now, and to be honest they have such ridiculously inflated prices in the first place that I might understand why the 30% fee is ok for them...

Other business don't have such margins, so most likely either they would sale at loss or would need to increase the prices (overall, due to the same-price rule) to take the 30% fee and still turn a profit.

There is nothing unreasonable about Apple taking a fee for processing payments on their platform. Typical fees for this kind of service are around 2%. With that pricing it would most likely work.

 

[marksman]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Anyone who thinks the only value apple provides is cc processing should stop posting on the Internet. Even on that single issue you are wrong as there are more costs with accepting and processing credit cards than just the bank fees.

This does explain why so many small businesses fail. The average consumer has a completely crazy lack of understanding of how even the most
basic businesses work. The biggest
failure is a major gap in not knowing
and understanding the number and
variety of expenses any businness has.
The other is not understanding where the value is in a given product or service.

Do any of you who keep mindlessly parroting that the 30% fee is outrageous have any practical experience in owning or even just managing / running a business of any kind? Since the answer is no does it ever cross your mind, even fleetingly, that you might hold a high level of ignorance on the subject matter and discuss accordingly? There are lots of things I dont know or understand but at least I am willing to stipulate to that when discussing something. One area where I am not ignorant in , though, is owning, running and managing businesses. If all you can contribute is 30% is too much or they are just processing credit cards can you at least caveat those things by saying "I don't have any experience or in depth knowledge here but I think..."

 

[bsolar]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Anyone who thinks the only value apple provides is cc processing should stop posting on the Internet. Even on that single issue you are wrong as there are more costs with accepting and processing credit cards than just the bank fees.

Apple with their IAP is technically just processing payments, it's obvious its cost gets compared to similar offers from other companies. I don't care about their internal costs, I only care that there are other companies able to process my payments for much lower fees than Apple (when they actually are not barred from competing).

Apple claims iOS is providing added-value to the apps, since being in iOS is providing the opportunity for the sale to happen in the first place. This is something I agree with, but Apple cannot forget that also the apps do provide added-value to iOS.

I'll talk about my case, I have bought an iOS device because the Kindle App was available for it, not the other way around. With the Kindle App not available in iOS I would have bought exactly the same number of eBooks, but Apple would have sold an iPhone less and I'd have most likely got some Android device instead. So who is exactly boosting the sales of who? Even Apple leverages the availability of apps in their ads to sell more iOS devices.

This does explain why so many small businesses fail. The average consumer has a completely crazy lack of understanding of how even the most
basic businesses work. The biggest
failure is a major gap in not knowing
and understanding the number and
variety of expenses any businness has.
The other is not understanding where the value is in a given product or service.

Do any of you who keep mindlessly parroting that the 30% fee is outrageous have any practical experience in owning or even just managing / running a business of any kind? Since the answer is no does it ever cross your mind, even fleetingly, that you might hold a high level of ignorance on the subject matter and discuss accordingly? There are lots of things I dont know or understand but at least I am willing to stipulate to that when discussing something. One area where I am not ignorant in , though, is owning, running and managing businesses. If all you can contribute is 30% is too much or they are just processing credit cards can you at least caveat those things by saying "I don't have any experience or in depth knowledge here but I think..."

I don't consider my opinion to be the only and holy truth, it's obvious that what I think can be completely wrong, but this is true no matter who you are or what your experience is, that's why you should take into account every opinion no matter who happens to be voicing it and only judge the actual content.

In any case it's not like only we "average customers without a clue" argue that 30% is too much. Many third-parties basically vouched the same complaints with the fee with basically the same arguments. Many of these are surely not "failing small businesses" handled by people "ignorant in the matter" and if they consider this 30% unreasonable probably it's not because they are stupid.

In any case, the market is already deciding the issue. If companies think having Apple's IAP is worth the 30% fee they will "buy" it. From what I see until now it was not such a huge succes as Apple hoped for, but time will tell.

 

[mustnotsleep]

Just use realclearpolitics and link into their articles for free. Most NYT articles are just Paul Krugman telling you that you are evil if you dont want higher taxes. They went from the nr1 newspaper in America to a Democratic party advertisement. They definitely dont deserve anywhere close to that kind of money.

 

[AppleZilla]

I am not the kind of person that complains that an App is 1.99 instead of .99 or free. I'm really not.

I would really like to subscribe, but it is so damn expensive. $34.99? I would take that package in a heartbeat for $14.99.

 

[AppleZilla]

Just use realclearpolitics and link into their articles for free. Most NYT articles are just Paul Krugman telling you that you are evil if you dont want higher taxes. They went from the nr1 newspaper in America to a Democratic party advertisement. They definitely dont deserve anywhere close to that kind of money.

Taxes are lower than they were under President Bush and lower than they've been for 60 years. If the current administration wants to increase taxes on the rich to get us out of this leftover mess, then fine by me.

And public opinion polls are strongly in favor of this action.

 

[mustnotsleep]

Taxes are lower than they were under President Bush and lower than they've been for 60 years. If the current administration wants to increase taxes on the rich to get us out of this leftover mess, then fine by me.

And public opinion polls are strongly in favor of this action.

No, its really not. I read politics and polls every day so your baseless claims are meaningless without proof. And your knowledge of history is meager at best. During WW2, FDR made taxes over some amount (I think $30k, but it may have been as high as $45k) 100% and this tax rate stuck around for decades. Meaning any amount made over that was taken completely by the feds. To say that taxes are lower than 100% is a pretty lame excuse for saying they are low now. It is obvious you know nothing about politics or US history and so you might as well stop now before you keep embarassing yourself. Or just keep reading Krugman, either way stop debating others who are not nearly as ignorant as you are.

 

[ILikeTurtles]

$34.99 a month for the NYT!

OMFG - That's obscene.