Even though the percentage of the population who even has access to interactive tablets such as iPads is very small, companies are scrambling and spending millions to get their hands on the market of electronic tablet newspapers.
Last week, Rupert Murdoch spent $30 million dollars to launch The Daily, an iPad-only newspaper, says Julianne Pepitone of CNNMoney.com. It will cost an annual $26 million dollars to keep it running. That's a lot of money for a newspaper with a fairly small potential audience, right? Well, according to industry forecasts, the ownership of tablets such as iPads is about to sky rocket. "Apple sold 14.8 million iPads last year, and its nearest rival, Samsung's Galaxy Tab, shipped 2 million devices" says Peptitone. A research firm called eMarketer predicts that in 2012, sales of tablets will reach over 81 million.
That's quite a leap, considering it is just now early 2011. However, with over 100 competitors of the iPad set to release their own tablet models by that time, it's certainly a possibility. With all of this change and flux in the digital age, what is to become of paper news? And for that matter, magazines? I thought Kindle was a silly idea when I first heard of it. Surely, no one would prefer a reading literature from a screen over the feeling of a good old fashioned hardcover book. Man, is my face red.
