Last week on All Things D’s MediaMemo, Peter Kafka covered an e-magazine startup that bills itself as the “Hulu for Magazines”. Next Issue Media plans to launch an e-magazine digital storefront in early 2011, for Android devices only. Next Issue’s CEO, Morgan Guenther, says that the platform could technically support Apple, but is launching with Android because it is a “very important tablet [and smartphone] platform”.
Kafka suggests that the largest reason for the split may be publishers’ desire to sell directly to consumers, and have access to consumer data that Apple has been reluctant to share. He also thinks that New Issue Media’s Android magazine store may be a way for publishers to put pressure on Apple to come around to their ways of thinking.
Of course, it will all be academic if publishers can’t figure out how to make their magazines more appealing, less clunky, and less expensive, so that more readers actually want to buy them.
