News Publishers Prepare Apps for Samsung Tablet

Although many news publishers were slow to release apps for Apple’s iPad, it appears several are eager to appear on Samsung’s forthcoming tablet device, the Galaxy Tab, as quickly as possible.
According to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Company, News Corp and the Gannett Company (publisher of USA Today) are developing apps for the Android-based tablet, which is scheduled to become available to consumers in the UK on November 1 and in the U.S. later this year.
The New York Times will be preloaded on certain versions of the device and available for free until it begins charging for access to all of its online content, according to one source.
The tablet sports a 7-inch TFT-LCD display with 1024×600-pixel resolution, Android 2.2 support, a Cortex A8 1 GHz processor, 512 of RAM, 16/32 GB of internal memory with upgrade options, and Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. It comes with not one, but two cameras: a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED Flash in the back, plus a second 1.3-megapixel camera for video chats in the front. The battery, Samsung claims, can last up to seven hours of movie playback. Unlike the iPad, it offers support for popular multimedia formats such as Flash.
Publishers plan to adapt the apps they build for the Galaxy Tab for additional Android devices in the future, the WSJ claims. In addition to the Galaxy Tab, News Corp and Pearson PLC, which publishes The Financial Times, are also reportedly working on apps for Research in Motion’s forthcoming tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, set for release in early 2011.
We’ve reached out to various magazine publishers, but none have yet confirmed that they are developing apps for either the Galaxy Tab or the BlackBerry PlayBook.
In recent conversations, publishers have told Mashable they are eager to embrace new platforms and devices, partly because they offer some negotiating power with Apple, which currently dominates the tablet market with its top-selling iPad. Newspapers and magazines have not been given prominent placement in the App Store, compared to e-books, they complain; media outlets are shuffled in with various kinds of reading apps in the News section, and magazines are relegated to the broad and overwhelming Lifestyle category. More significantly, newspapers and magazines have been unable to offer subscriptions through the service, a staple of their business models.
As one executive put it, “We just hope it’s not iPadville for the rest of our lives.”

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