We’re pleased to announce that Igor Smirnoff, NewspaperDirect’s Vice President, Digital, is a featured panelist at this year’s BlackBerry World, the largest annual gathering for the BlackBerry ecosystem. Igor will outline the business opportunities that RIM’s current and future products, including the upcoming BlackBerry 10 smartphone, represent for publishers.

Igor is participating in a media panel at BlackBerry World 2012: “Quality Profitable Opportunities for Publishing Partners on BlackBerry.” The panel discussions will cover several areas, including: development options, how to work with publishers, and providing a compelling user experience. NewspaperDirect has long been a supporter of the BlackBerry platform, and recently launched an updated version of its flagship news app for mobile devices, PressReader for BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0.

Event/panel details:

• BlackBerry World 2012
• Media panel: Quality Profitable Opportunities for Publishing Partners on BlackBerry
• Wednesday, May 2, 2012, 9:00 a.m.
• Tampa Room

Igor has been with NewspaperDirect since 2003 and is a recognized expert in the formulation of effective cross-platform and multichannel strategies for leading publishers around the world and focuses on the development of the company’s newspaper and magazine publisher network, partnerships with mobile and tablet device manufacturers, as well as with major telecom operators and software companies. Today, working closely with 2,200 publishers in 96 countries, as well as many market partners, he is actively involved with the development of an industrywide strategy for migration of publishers’ printed business into the digital realm.

The latest version of PressReader, optimized for BlackBerry Tablet OS, is now available for free download from BlackBerry App World providing PlayBook users with access to over 1,900 full-content newspapers and magazines from 95 countries!

With PressReader for PlayBook, users will benefit from intuitive and easy-to-use features, including the ability to conveniently set up auto-delivery of newspaper and magazine subscriptions, as well as the ability of reading downloaded publications off-line in both portrait and landscape modes.  Other features include:

• Flipping pages as if reading a paper publication
• Panning /zooming articles and images, and viewing them in stunning clarity
• Easily navigating publications using page thumbnails or tables of contents
• Opening full articles in easy-to-read text view
• Searching online across titles and selecting the desired titles for download
• Sharing articles on Facebook and Twitter
• Authorizing PressReader as part of the existing PressDisplay.com subscription

Watch a demonstration of PressReader for PlayBook below:

PressReader for PlayBook is the perfect application for busy professionals who need to stay on top of business-critical news or connect with what’s happening at home when they are on the road,” said Alex Kroogman, CEO of NewspaperDirect. “The BlackBerry brand is popular around the world and so we’re extremely pleased to make PressReader available to BlackBerry PlayBook users who want the most immersive news reading experience on their favorite tablet.

“The robust and growing catalogue of local, national and international newspapers and magazines available through PressReader allows BlackBerry PlayBook users to have instant, portable access to the world’s press every day,” said Tyler Lessard, VP Global Alliances & Developer Relations, Research in Motion.

Now we want to hear what you think! If you have feedback or suggestions, feel free to post a comment here or email us at PlayBook@support.newspaperdirect.com.

Cheers,

Michael

Last week, the New York Times joined the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times in confirming something we’ve been preaching for a long time – people are still willing to pay a premium for high-quality news content! We were so excited to read this article from the Columbia Journalism Review, we just had to share it with our readers.

One quarter after establishing their metered paywall, the NYT saw its revenues go up for the first time in twelve quarters! They’ve discovered that up to 15% of their online audience are actually heavy users that are willing to pay for content.Additionally, their new digital deal has encouraged those wavering on renewing their subscriptions to move forward, seeing the value for their money.

If that’s not encouraging enough, the paywall also helped the newspaper’s ad revenues. Contrary to the public opinion that a paywall would slash digital ad revenues, digital advertising actually increased by 16%! Advertisers see the potential with this paywall, as these paid digital subscribers become sort of a premium class of customers whose reading habits they can analyze, which supports targeting and garners higher ad prices.

BCG did a study last year and discovered that large numbers users world-wide were in fact willing to pay for news content, and that the impact on a newspaper’s margins are significant. You can read more on their February 2009 study here.

Our publishers have long known the benefits in choosing a strong technology partner. They focus on doing what they do best – generating quality content, and they let us do what we do best – giving their subscribers what they want, wherever they want it, in print, online or on their mobile device/tablet of choice!

Here at NewspaperDirect, we’re feeling fantastic impacts as well.  With new tablets hitting the market, such as the iPad2, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and BlackBerry Playbook, more people than ever are discovering PressDisplay.com and its companion application PressReader and the great value they offer to readers.

It’s exciting to see that people are re-igniting their love of newspapers, and it gives us great pleasure to offer them access to all their favorite publications. As one loyal fan from Australia raves:

“Mighty impressed with PressReader App. For someone who enjoys reading quality newspapers it is pigs’ heaven! $1 a day for unlimited reading.” Neil, Australia

We’re thrilled that the word is spreading on what we’ve known all along, that newspapers aren’t dead and that people are willing to pay for quality news content. With a great app like PressReader, which can give users unlimited access to all their favorite publications worldwide, staying up to date with the news most relevant to you is easier and more convenient than ever!

Cheers!

-Kate

Hey everyone,

Did you see the new forecast by Gartner? Analysts there are saying that the Apple iOS will dominate the media tablet market through 2015, owning more than half of it for the next 3 years.

Well, that’s certainly a bold statement given the fact that the Android tablets have hardly scratched the surface of retail store shelves.

According to Gartner,  “Google’s decision not to open up the Honeycomb, its first OS version dedicated to tablets, to third parties will prevent fragmentation, but it will also slow the price decline and ultimately cap market share at 39%.”

As for RIM, Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner said, ““It will take time and significant effort for RIM to attract developers and deliver a compelling ecosystem of applications and services around QNX to position it as a viable alternative to Apple or Android. This will limit RIM’s market share growth over the forecast period.  It will be mainly organizations that will be interested in RIM’s tablets because they either already have RIM’s infrastructure deployed or have stringent security requirements.”

It was only two months ago that Research firm IHS iSuppli estimated that by 2013, the iPad’s market share would decline to less than 50% of the overall market.

LOL!  Tablet wars haven’t really even started yet, but the analysts are already boxing it out in the numbers game.  I’m surprised that they are that far apart in their predictions, but I guess that makes good headlines.

At this point, I don’t think anyone really knows what will happen, but it certainly makes for interesting reading and gives me something to blog about

I’m curious…Who do you think will have the largest tablet market share in 2015?

Gayle