Your Apple News app may soon get a paid-subscription makeover, as Apple plans to integrate what's been called 'the Netflix of magazines' to the currently free service.
Texture, an app that charges $9.99 a month for unlimited access to 200 magazine titles, is being shoehorned into a future version of Apple News, according to Bloomberg.
This ties into expectations of an upgraded Apple News experience within the next year and Apple's lofty goal of increasing profits of its services division by 60% by 2021.
Ready to pay for Apple News?
There's an off-chance that we'll see this subscription-tier of Apple News launch as part of iOS 12, the next iOS update that's expected to debut at WWDC 2018.
More likely, it's being saved for iOS 13. Apple just bought Texture last month, and is said to be focusing on iOS 12 stability, not features, given all of the iOS 11 problems.
There's a bigger question out there: will consumers be willing to pay for premium news and magazine content in the same way they currently pay for Netflix video content?
This isn't the first time Apple has offered digital subscriptions. But previous efforts like Newsstand weren't an all-you-can-eat way of going about it. It was splintered by publisher and thus, confusing.
Apple has proven that its iPhone customers are willing to pay for Music and iCloud – when it's easy to sign up. And it's reportedly spending more than $1 billion on original streaming video content with the same intensions.
