A new report says Apple is in talks with the likes of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal about providing content for an upcoming subscription service – possibly a sort of Netflix for magazines and newspapers.
As reported by Recode, Apple executives are busy trying to get the major newspapers on board ready to launch a new service at some point in 2019. Apple already has part of the plan in place: it picked up Texture, which gives users access to more than 200 magazines for a flat $9.99 monthly fee, earlier this year.
Now newspapers could be added to the mix, and based on previous rumors, music and television content would be thrown in as well. Next year you might be able to pay Apple one monthly fee for everything you want to watch, listen to and read.
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All this is unconfirmed by Apple at this point though. Recode says the newspapers themselves are worried about hurting their own subscription services – all three of the titles Apple is said to be speaking to have some form of paywall in place.
That said, the 1.3 billion active Apple devices currently in use around the world provide an attractively large market for the newspapers to tap into. It remains to be seen whether Apple can get these deals done before the planned launch of the service next year, and Apple itself refused to comment on the speculation.
We probably won't hear anything about the proposed new subscription service at Apple's event next Wednesday, September 12, which will be focused on the 2018 iPhones. Some kind of announcement at WWDC 2019 in June is much more likely.
