Apple's iPad 2 tablet will be offered together with a subscription to the Daily Maverick's new tablet publication, iMaverick, in August.
“Daily Maverick is launching an entire new publication, designed and built exclusively for tablets. It will initially be available on the iPad,” says deputy editor Philip de Wet.
Due to premier on 15 August, the publication is SA's first daily iPad newspaper and will also be made available to those who already have iPads.
The package being offered bundles the device with a subscription to iMaverick. It will cost a subscriber from R395 per month, including the iPad 2.
“South Africans are well familiar with newspaper subscriptions, as well as cellphone contracts. We're effectively combining the two, in order to kick-start the tablet newspaper market,” adds De Wet.
He also says the publication will go where the readers are and so it will keep an eye on the local adoption of Android tablets and the BlackBerry Playbook.
Obvious step
The subscription model will work well for people who simply don't want to drop the full price of the device up-front just as many choose not to do so for smartphones, according to the deputy editor.
“Every South African deserves to own an iPad; now more will have the ability to do so.”
It may seem a bold step to create an entire, daily publication for iPads when there are relatively few in the local market, “but we think it's a pretty damn obvious one”, adds De Wet.
Criminal omission
The previous phenomenon has been print publications going online, but this is now morphing into online publications going mobile.
“Mobile is increasingly important for online publications, but tablets are a whole different kettle of fish.”
De Wet explains that cellphones require pared-down information, while tablets allow for one to scale up instead.
“You can make your Web site content available by way of an app, but why the hell bother? That's what Web browsers are for. Tablets offer publications so much more freedom, so many more possibilities. It verges on the criminal not to take advantage of that and build specifically for these devices.”
Branko Brkic, founder of Daily Maverick and publisher of iMaverick, says the iPad is transforming people's experience of news and content.
De Wet adds that iMaverick will effectively be a daily newspaper masquerading as a daily news magazine.
Subscribers to the daily iPad newspaper can expect to see coverage of business, politics, current affairs, sport, entertainment, technology and health.
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