iPhone Apps Emerge As Possible Paid Solution

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:
– Why Moleskine Is The Model For Newspaper Survival
– Scarcity, Abundance And The Misapprehension Of Online Advertising
– Poll Shocker: Newspaper Readers Still Not Willing To Pay Online

Fraser Nelson, Political Blogger

Fraser Nelson, for the uninitiated, is the political editor of the Spectator and is one part of the very readable collective blog Coffee House.

Despite the gifts of the other contributors, he’s the undoubted star of the show. He instinctively gets the form.

Take his campaign to get Gordon Brown to come clean on Labour’s spending/cutting commitments. Nelson was the first to identify cuts dressed up as investment buried in Alistair Darling’s budget.