Apple is preparing to launch the Newsstand service, offering newspapers and magazines to its iOS device users. Most likely it will be folks with iPads that will be interested to use it, but I can easily envision people accessing the same content both from their iPhone and iPad.
The “default” deal the Cupertino-based company is offering to publishers includes taking 30% cut, just like they do with apps. Leading French newspapers don’t think that’s fair, hence 8 of them — including Le Figaro, Les Echos, le Nouvel Observateur and the sports daily L’Equipe — have teamed-up to get better deal from Apple. According to L’Equipe’s Xavier Spender, publications adopting Apple’s proposition “make less money selling a digital edition of the newspaper” than it would with the printed version.
Meanwhile, they [French publishers] have also started experimenting with the similar service Google is offering, though as we all know it – there are still not that many Android tablets out there. And with the iPad pretty much dominating the market, Apple can dictate the terms.
We’ll see where this goes…
[Via: TUAW]