Hugh Hefner says Playboy to release uncensored iPad app
By Chris Hogg
According to multiple statements made by Hugh Hefner, Playboy will soon be available on the iPad and it will feature full, uncensored nudity. When asked by Digital Journal to confirm or deny Hefner’s claims, Apple declined to comment.
In a series of tweets made yesterday, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner says Playboy fans would be able to download the magazine’s uncensored iPad app in March.
“The iPad Version of Playboy will include the whole magazine from the first issue to the latest,” Hefner said. “Playboy on iPad will be uncensored,” he continued.
Apple is famous for its strict policy when it comes to nudity, and has stated on numerous occasions that its iOS devices are no place for porn. As TechCrunch reports, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been a vocal opponent of allowing adult content on iOS devices, saying, “We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone.”
With Heffner now claiming an uncensored Playboy will come to the iPad, it’s unclear if Apple has reversed its decision on adult content or if Hefner is speaking ahead of actual confirmation.
When asked for comment, an Apple spokesperson would not provide any more detail to confirm or deny the tweets, telling Digital Journal simply, “We will decline to comment.”
Opening the doors to nudity with a Playboy app could start a snowball effect for Apple, as other publishers and companies who produce adult content would surely line-up to get their apps on iOS devices.
But as Mashable notes, “When you’re a publication as big as Playboy, you can try to persuade Apple to place additional measures of protecting minors from accessing adult material, and it’s quite possible that we’ll see something along these lines in March.”
Study: Smartphones and tablets to outsell computers in 2011
By Chris Hogg
For the first time in history, cellphone and tablet sales are expected to outnumber computer sales, a study by Deloitte Canada predicts. The report says 425 million smartphones and tablets are expected to ship globally compared to 400 million PCs.
“In 2011, more than half of computing devices sold globally will not be PCs,” the report (PDF) indicates. “While PC sales are likely to reach almost 400 million units, Deloitte’s estimate for combined sales of smartphones, tablets and non-PC netbooks is well over that amount.”
Deloitte is a professional services firm that provides audit, tax, consulting, and financial advisory services to businesses. This study was released as part of the company’s 2011 global Technology, Media & Telecommunications Predictions report.
“Unlike the 2009 netbook phenomenon, when buyers chose machines that were less powerful versions of traditional PCs (but still PCs), the 2011 computing market will be dominated by devices that use different processing chips and operating systems than those used for PCs over the past 30 years,” the report says. “This shift has prompted some analysts to proclaim the era of the PC is over.”
Deloitte disagrees with the belief that traditional PCs are dead, saying they are going to continue to be the workhorse computing platform for most people around the world. That said, Deloitte believes 2011 will be a tipping point as consumers move away from standard PCs to a new era of smartphones and tablets.
“[Consumers] will continue to move away from a predictable, but narrow, world of standardized computing devices like the PC, and vote with their wallets in favour of a diversity of choices including tablets and smartphones,” a Deloitte Canada news release says.
Deloitte’s study mirrors a lot of the predictions made by Polar Mobile, an app developer for more than 150 customers including Time, BusinessWeek and Digital Journal. In December 2010, Polar Mobile made 11 predictions for the future of mobile where the company forecast explosive growth for mobiles and tablets.
“Mobile will become part of every business’ marketing and distribution strategy in 2011,” Kunal Gupta, CEO of Polar Mobile, told DigitalJournal.com in an email statement in December. “That’s where we all spend our time and brands, marketers and publishers will want to capture that opportunity.”
Anyone who ever wanted evidence of mobile growth need look no further than Apple, a leader in the mobile and tablet worlds. The company announced its Q1 earnings yesterday, boasting record revenue of $26.74 billion and record net quarterly profit of $6 billion. Apple says it sold 16.24 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. iPads also saw booming sales, with Apple saying the company sold 7.33 million iPads during the quarter and nearly 15 million in 2010. More than 17 million are expected to ship in 2011.
Furthermore, tech companies showed off more than 80 tablets at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.
With the growth of the smartphone and tablet market, Deloitte says price, performance, form factor and other variables will be diverse and thus make buying decisions more complicated for consumers.
“Choosing a device will take longer, and will need to be done more carefully,” the study notes.
In a news release, Duncan Stewart Director of Deloitte Canada Research and co-author of TMT Predictions 2011, said, “Like kids in a candy store, consumers and enterprises will be excited, yet overwhelmed by the sheer variety of options available to them. With PCs, netbooks, tablets and smartphones, buyers must choose among a wide array of functionalities, platforms, operating systems, sizes, features and price points.”
Deloitte’s top 10 predictions for 2011 include:
- Smartphones and tablets: More than half of all computers aren’t computers anymore
- Tablets in the enterprise: More than just a toy
- Operating system diversity: No standard emerges on the smartphone or tablet
- Social network advertising: How big can it get?
- Television’s “super media” status strengthens
- PVRs proliferate! The 30-second spot doesn’t die!
- Push beats pull in the battle for the television viewer
- What’s “in-store” for Wi-Fi: Retailers roll-out Wi-Fi
- Getting to 4G cheaply: Will many carriers opt for 3.5G instead? The proliferation of new computing devices doesn’t mean that we need new networks
- Wi-Fi complements cellular broadband for “data on the move”
More details on each of these can be found in Deloitte’s report (PDF) or via a livestream online.
What will Murdoch’s iPad magazine The Daily look like?
The Daily, an upcoming iPad-only magazine from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, has delayed its launch but already the Web is buzzing with rumours of what this unique media property will look like and how it will function.
Scheduled to launch this Wednesday, The Daily has been delayed for several weeks, or even months, according to media reports. iPad owners will have to wait a bit longer to their hands on the iPad-specific publication created by Murdoch’s News Corp.
But at the very least, hints of The Daily’s looks and function are being revealed on the Web. Damon Kiesow of Poynter.org said he got a sneak peek of the source code of its recently-launched companion website, The Daily.com. The front page is dominated by photos, and Kiesow spotted two headlines that may or may not relate to actual articles: “Oprah’s Biggest Gamble” and “A Bridge Too Favre.”
He also said The Daily may include an embedded video player and “the availability of Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit and Newsvine article sharing options.”
AdAge found out other details: The Daily will include a multi-story front page, but “magazine-style layouts within, as well as graphics that take advantage of the iPad’s capabilities in terms of rotating, pinching and swiping and video culled from News Corp. outlets.”
Ads will also be super-sized. AdAge quotes Porter Gale, VP-marketing at Virgin America, saying: “This will allow us to use images that can be turned around in a 3-D motion and that’s going to make it much more creative and memorable.”
One hundred writers, editors and designers have been hired to work on the project. Subscriptions will cost 99¢ a week after a two-week trial through Apple’s App Store.
Apple’s iPad is the sole device to offer The Daily at launch, although AdAge reports Murdoch is planning to spread The Daily to other tablet devices, such as Android and BlackBerry devices.
Andy Chapman, head of digital trading at WPP’s Mindshare, is optimistic about The Daily’s chances: “This will be a good temperature check for the marketplace for what consumers’ financial threshold is for good content. We’re all waiting to see where the audience gravitates.”
This article was originally published on DigitalJournal.com
Study: iPad news apps will hurt newspaper print subscriptions
By Chris Hogg
According to a new report from the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, more than 50 percent of print newspaper subscribers who use their iPad at least an hour a day for news are likely to cancel their print subscriptions over the next six months.
Furthermore, nearly 31 percent of iPad users surveyed said they don’t subscribe to printed newspapers and 10 percent indicated they already cancelled their print subscriptions and switched to reading digital versions on the iPad.
The report is the first phase of a multi-year research project to understand how Apple iPad users consume news content. The data was collected based on the responses gathered from more than 1,600 iPad users.
Among the findings, respondents who read at least an hour’s worth of news on their iPads every day — more than 90 percent of everyone surveyd — are either very likely or somewhat likely to use a newspaper’s app for reading news. Even among light news readers, the study indicated apps are the preferred method of delivery for news consumers over websites.
“These findings are encouraging for newspaper publishers who plan to begin charging for subscriptions on their iPad app editions early next year, but our survey also found a potential downside: iPad news apps may diminish newspaper print subscriptions in 2011,” Roger Fidler, RJI’s program director for digital publishing and the research project leader, said in a statement.
In total, the survey found three-quarters of respondents consume news for at least 30 minutes on their iPad, with nearly half saying they do so for an hour or more. iPad users are typically more male, well-educated, affluent and between the ages of 35 and 64.
According to the report, the iPad also encourages other news consumption, as the study found the more a person uses an iPad to consume news, the more he or she is likely to use other digital media to consume news.
When it comes to overall experience consuming news on an iPad, respondents were asked to rate their reading experience on the iPad compared to other media on a five-point scale. Respondents said iPad reading experiences were somewhat better than, or about the same, as experiences reading printed newspapers or magazines.
A total of 48.1 percent said the iPad news experience was better than the iPhone’s.
Age also plays a role in iPad experience, as older users tend to say the device is worse than the traditional newspaper-reading experience. Older users, however, said the iPad was better than other electronic devices with smaller screens for news consumption.
The study noted iPad users would be more likely to buy newspaper apps for “a price lower than the price of a print subscription.” Reliability and ease-of-use were also important among iPad users.
So which news organizations have the highest-rated news apps? According to this survey, the most popular responses were: The New York Times, USA Today, The Associated Press, and The Wall Street Journal.
More details on this report can be found here.
Study: iPad users spend more time consuming news than iPhone users
By Chris Hogg
A study released today from Nielsen shows news and music are the most popular types of content consumed on the iPad. According to the study of “internet connected devices,” users spend ore time per session with news and music than users on the iPhone.
The survey of 5,000 consumers who own a tablet, eReader, netbook, media/games player or smartphone indicated 44 percent of iPad users say they access news content regularly. That is just behind the 53 percent who consume news regularly on their iPhone.
That said, it appears as though iPad users spend more time consuming news; the survey showed 26 percent of iPad users spend 31 minutes or more per weekday session consuming news, while only 7 percent of iPhone users spend the same amount of time consuming news.
Some other key findings include:
- iPad users are younger, and mostly male compared to other connected devices; 65 percent are male and 65 percent are under 35 years of age (Kindle users are 52 percent male, with 47 percent being under 35, according to Nielsen).
- 46 percent of tablet users allow others to use their devices (only one-third of smartphone and eReader users do the same)
More people watch video and read magazines on the iPad compared to the iPhone:
iPad users are also more receptive to advertising and more likely to make a purchase:
The summary of the survey can be found online here (opens in PDF)
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