Jon Bernstein

iPhone Apps Emerge As Possible Paid Solution October 1, 2009

The Spectator and the Guardian have seen the future of charging online – and it’s the Apple iPhone.

According to reports this week both are planning iPhone apps which will make their content available to mobile users on a pay-as-you go basis.

The Spectator will be the first out the traps with a ”miniaturised, page-turning, iPhone version of the real thing“. It will cost 59 pence on an issue-by-issue basis, or £2.39 a month.

paidContent.org, meanwhile, reports that the company that owns it, Guardian News & Media, has a content app of its own “in the pipeline“.

The details are sketchy but the Guardian’s digital director Emily Bell was quoted saying:

It’s still in development, but we are working on an app which I can’t give you too much more detail on at the moment, although we are likely to charge.

Micro and one-off payments have always been more likely to succeed on mobile phones where you’re just a click away from adding a few pence to your operator bill.

That ease of use doesn’t guarantee success, of course, and doesn’t get us much closer to a paid solution for the much far, non-mobile web.

Related:
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- Scarcity, Abundance And The Misapprehension Of Online Advertising
- Poll Shocker: Newspaper Readers Still Not Willing To Pay Online