We see the next flood of new portable color touchscreens headed to market in the next 18 months as a game changer. It will be the opportunity that content producers like Time Inc. have been waiting for to reestablish value for quality digital content. It’s argued that it will be impossible to get consumers to pay for digital content since they’ve grown up getting everything for free. We disagree.
The tablet restores something we lost when we went to the Web. Our readers can once again literally touch our content while still having that familiar “lean back” experience of a magazine. In real time, they can link in instead of linking out to the rest of the story on Time.com.
The advertising can be so good it can become content itself. It can help you evaluate products. And when you’ve made your decision it can help to find you a place to buy them.
As more and more hardware manufacturers come in with these e-readers there is just huge demand for our product, for our video product, for my print product—it’ll all be combined. We think very healthy business models will be coming out of it. We’ll be making more money in those businesses than we’ve been making with our traditional dot-coms.
People are paying. We know people will pay for it … it’s a business model that is just really very delicious.
via Time Inc. Is Really, Really Excited About Tablets « The Biz Blog – Forbes.com.
Using the politically correct terms “tablet” or “touchscreen” or “e-readers” to describe the iPad like it was PC for music companies to talk about “MP3 players” when referring to iPods.