Report: Apple planning subscription news service


A new report says that Apple is planning to release a subscription service for news. The rumors follow Apple's recent acquisition of Texture, which offers a "Netflix-like" service of $9.99 a month for full access to many news sources. It's thought Apple is following its Apple Music module to continuing building its services revenues.

Bloomberg:

A new, simplified subscription service covering multiple publications could spur Apple News usage and generate new revenue in a similar manner to the $9.99 per month Apple Music offering. That streaming service was also built through an acquisition: Apple bought Beats Music and the Beats audio device business in 2014 for $3 billion. At the time, Beats Music had fewer than a million subscribers, and Apple has turned that into more than 40 million paying users.

This is all logical and widely speculated last month when it became public the company purchased Texture. The pricing model is unknown and we'll have to see if Apple adds any value to the service similar to how to created original radio-style broadcasts with Beats One.

Apple is also working on original TV programming. It's widely assumed this content will be made available with Apple Music subscriptions. I wonder if Apple may bundle a new service also with Apple Music or perhaps as an add-on. Amazon is having success with a single Prime subscription that serves many interests across a wide range of customers. I feel like a news subscription might relatively small potatoes for Apple, but could make Apple Music (perhaps to be rebranded with TV and news) more attractive.