If you want to build a sustainable long-term business – a direct-to-consumer business – and your main product is a zero marginal cost product, you have to reframe what you’re selling and that framing is not just a marketing technique. It’s not just throwing up a slogan. It is actually going throughout your entire organization and changing sort of the way that you think about everything and the New York Times, I thought, articulate this extremely well.

I’m going to quote what they wrote: „We are, in the simplest terms, a subscription first business. Our focus on subscribers sets us apart in crucial ways for many other media organizations. We are not trying to maximize clicks and sell low margin advertising against them. We are not trying to win a page views arms race. We believe that the business strategy for the times is to provide journalism so strong, that several million people around the world are willing to pay for it.“

The messy, semi-embryonic state of AR partially explains why Apple hasn’t had an AR marketing chief until now. Last night — nearly three years after Cook began touting AR, and almost two years after Apple released ARKit — Bloomberg reported that Apple has just named Frank Casanova as its first head of AR marketing. […]

From where I stand, that sort of marketing — backed by legitimately worthwhile products — is highly necessary to reignite interest in AR at this stage. Apart from Pokémon Go, which had the benefit of a massive pre-existing fan base and Nintendo series name recognition, and free social media AR face-augmenting apps, average people don’t seem anywhere as interested in augmented reality as Tim Cook or numerous fellow technologists. There’s been no shortage of AR software announcements, such as furniture placement and virtual clothing try-on apps, but scant evidence of consumer interest.

Good marketing might change that, though Apple now has an uphill battle to reverse AR’s history of overpromising and underdelivering.

Apple plans to keep about 50% of subscription revenue from ‘Netflix for news’ service, likely won’t share customer data with publishers

Wall Street Journal

Große Publisher, so wie die New York Times oder die Washington Post, stecken nach Angaben des Wall Street Journal noch in laufenden Verhandlungen mit Apple. Es ist schon ein verdammt großer Zufall, dass die (zugegeben groteske) 50/50-Umsatzteilung gerade gestern durchgesickert ist – am Tag, an dem sich der Event-Termin zum Startschuss für diesen Service herumsprach…

Ich habe keine Ahnung, wie ernsthaft der Vorschlag über einen „50-Prozent-Cut“ tatsächlich im Raum steht, aber die Abwertung der journalistischen Produkte hat dadurch bereits stattgefunden.

Wer erinnert sich noch, was Eddy Cue bei der Übernahme von Texture damals in die Pressemeldung schrieb? „We are committed to quality journalism from trusted sources and allowing magazines to keep producing beautifully designed and engaging stories for users. weiterlesen

Apple’s push to get developers to build subscription-based apps is now having a notable impact on App Store revenues. According to a new report from Sensor Tower due out later this week, revenue generated per U.S. iPhone grew 36 percent, from $58 in 2017 to $79 last year. As is typical, much of that increase can be attributed to mobile gaming, which accounted for more than half of this per-device average. However, more substantial growth took place in the categories outside of gaming — including those categories where subscription-based apps tend to rule the top charts, the firm found.

„US iPhone users spent, on average, $79 on apps last year, up 36% from 2017”

Die durchschnittlichen 79 US-Dollar, die ein US-Kunde im Jahr 2018 für Apps ausgegeben haben soll, ist keine sehr hilfreiche Angabe. Egal wie man es nämlich dreht und wendet: Es bleibt ein Durchschnittswert (das arithmetische Mittel), der sich aus den (gesamten) erzielten Umsätzen sowie der Anzahl an (allen) amerikanischen Kunden errechnet. weiterlesen