The Daily On iPad: 500,000 Readers A Day To Break Even

The daily paper exclusively reserved for the iPad was launched as planned on Wednesday in New York. with Richard Branson's The Project, The Daily is the second 100 % digital press title to come out recently. Its objective? To rejuvenate an industry in crisis via the tablet.

On sale at the aggressive annual tariff of USD 40 (99 cents a day, which should translate to 79p in the UK), it has a hundred or so pages (news added throughout the day according to what's going on in the world). The brainchild of News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch (Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Time, The Sun), it would seem to have what it takes to persuade what is an increasingly unreliable readership to shell out and pay for its news.

30 million dollars

While several prestigious papers (New York Times, Washington Post etc.) have banded together to set up a virtual online news kiosque, known as Ongo, Murdoch and Branson (Virgin), who are throwing money at their respective projects, have decided to go it alone by launching specially designed titles with video, widgets and digital blackboards, for the Apple tablet. There should be a version of The Daily for Android before too long.

Murdoch's hopes for the venture on iPad represent quite an investment. The launch has cost him USD 30 million and weekly costs are estimated to be in the order of USD 500,000. And what does the media magnate aim to achieve? The sale of 'millions of applications each week' apparently. When you've got the money, your ambition knows no bounds. However, he hasn't necessarily covered all the bases. Readers without tablets are gaining access to some of the content in The Daily, for free. The edition has a share feature and one user has listed articles for consultation, here.

The Project is going for a different, trendy, high-end market and is a monthly, on sale at USD 2.99.

As we know, Apple has decided to tighten up on publishers wanting to use the App Store to sell their publications. Nevertheless, the launch of The Daily is of course great publicity for the iPad, whose notoriety knows no bounds. It remains to be seen if readers will embrace this new way of getting its news.

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