The Age and the SMH come to the iPad, with help from Telstra

Stuart Corner
Monday, 30 May 2011 06:01

Your IT - Entertainment

Fairfax Media appears to have pre-empted its own press conference, with the Fairfax press reporting this morning that Telstra will sponsor a six month trial delivery of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald to the iPad, ahead of a Fairfax Media press conference.

Last week iTWire received an invitation from Fairfax Media to "a very special press conference on the 30th of May at 11.00am." Fairfax's PR agency refused to give any indication as to the nature of the announcement. However the invitation was presented as a screen image on an iPad.

The head of Fairfax's metropolitan media division, Jack Matthews, was reported saying that, while the iPad app still has advertising, it will have less advertising than the company's websites because it will be maintained as a 'premium product'. After the expiration of the trial a subscription will cost about $9 per month. The app will be available to the public from today, 30 May

The report said that Fairfax now had the capability to build applications for its other newspapers and expand its products onto Android devices because it had developed the iPad application internally, with help from consultants, rather than outsourcing the operation.

He added that selling the The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on Android tablets would be more lucrative because subscriptions sold through the Apple store incur a 30 percent distribution fee.

A spokeswoman for Telstra was reported saying that the company wanted to encourage tablet-based media content and already had 100,000 customers with iPads.