Android versions of Wired and The New Yorker will be available in the spring, Condé Nast announced Monday. The two publications have been available for the iPad for months, but only now are tablets running Google's competing operating system starting to come to market in earnest.
The publications will be designed for the Motorola Xoom, which is expected to launch on Feb. 24 for $800. It runs the latest flavor of Android, version 3.0 aka "Honeycomb." Motorola has positioned the Xoom as a direct competitor to the iPad.
If you are lucky enough to be attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, you can get a hands-on demo at the Android booth.
So far Condé Nast -- which also owns Wired.com — has one Android product: Epicurious, which the company says has been downloaded 500,000 times from the Android marketplace. Its other digital magazines include Glamour, GQ, *Gourmet Live *and Vanity Fair.
Assuming that tablets running Android become crowd pleasers — Apple currently has a 75 percent market share — that platform could present an easier path for publishers to offer not only digital, but platform-agnostic subscriptions. Sports Illustrated already offers an "all access" subscription of $48 which delivers the weekly in print and in a variety of digital forms, including Android — but not the iPad, where SI is available only by the copy, at $5.
The absence of discounted subscription plans for iPad magazines is the single biggest complaint by readers who have to pay a cover price for each copy they download. For Wired, a monthly, that's $4 and for The New Yorker, a weekly, it's $5.
The Daily's launch was accompanied by an easing in Apple's Terms of Service to permit customers to elect to buy subscriptions directly from publishers rather than through the iTunes store. The issue is important to publishers because iTunes purchasing is well-established and relatively frictionless, but they are not entitled to any subscriber information from purchases made in Apple's app store.
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