AP announces subscription app for iPad

The AP's chief executive, Tom Curley, announced the new business unit, called AP Gateway, during a speech Friday to the Colorado Press Association.

AP Gateway will focus on expanding such products as the AP Mobile news service for cell phones and the kinds of online platforms that the AP developed for the Winter Olympics and Copenhagen climate talks. Some services might be supported by advertising revenue, while others might require readers to pay subscriptions, Curley said.

The group already has drawn up plans to charge for an application designed for the iPad, a 1.5-pound tablet computer that Apple Inc. is scheduled to release at the end of March. The price of the application has yet to be determined, although it might start free, according to Jane Seagrave, a senior vice president who becomes the AP's chief revenue officer Monday.

Much like the AP Mobile news product, the iPad app will show custom packages of headlines, stories, photos and video from the AP and from newspapers and broadcasters that choose to contribute their content and share the revenue. AP members also could use the same system to offer their own iPad apps that show their own content.

"AP Gateway builds on the strength of the cooperative in the era of digital publishing," said William Dean Singleton, who heads newspaper publisher MediaNews Group and is chairman of the AP board.

The AP's iPad app could compete with offerings from some of its member newspapers, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which also are believed to be mulling whether to sell subscriptions on the iPad to take advantage of its format. The slate-like computer, which will sell for US$499 to US$829, has a touch screen that measures 9.7 inches diagonally. In comparison, the iPhone is just 3.5 inches.

The plans reflect the news media's hope — still untested — that consumers will be more willing to pay for content on the iPad and similar handheld devices than they have been on traditional computers that depend solely on Web browsers to surf the Internet.

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