WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

The Times and The Sunday Times are ready to charge for access to their online editions.

A bold move.

Typical of Rupert Murdoch.

Like the typical trashing that he gets in the last few years regarding his fight against the “free for all”

Well, very soon we will know.

And… what if Rupert Murdoch is right?

I will suspend my judgement.

He loves newspapers and is taking big risks.

So I will not be surprise if, again, he right.

UPDATE:

Watch here Rupert Murdoch on the iPad, Apple and Steve Jobs.

Tom Peters FFF mantra fits very well with the need of experimentation for any company that wants to lead the iPad revolution:

“Fail. Forward. Fast”

I just got the first registration list from the INMA/INNOVATION Oxford Tablet Summit (May 17-18, 2008) with almost 140 people!

Well, the good news is that the 100 limit has been exceeded and now due to the number of late registrations, the Summit is making space for only 10 more participants.

So if you are interested, before the Oxford Tablet Summit is sold out, register right now here.

And let me summarize what you can expect from this first Oxford Summit:

1. The big picture: how print media started on paper and is heading to digital mobile tablets.

2. How do you reorganize your newsroom for the Tablet Age. Expect examples.

3. Why New Digital Narratives are the best way to tell stories with the tablets. Expect examples.

4. What are the best Navigation Guidelines for the new tablets. Expect examples.

5. What are the best Design Guidelines for these tablets. Expect examples.

6. How must we change our Editorial Teams and their Workflows to make tablet content. Expect examples.

7. Why this is The New Age of Digital Reading for News. Expect examples.

8. How we go from iPad to iPaid. Expect examples.

9. Key Concepts of Paid Content and Advertising on Tablets. Expect examples.

10. The INNOVATION Bible on the iPad. A complimentary copy of our Confidential Newsletter with a Special Report on the Tablet Revolution.

And 150 people willing to learn and to share with all of us their first prototypes, strategies, experiences… and a lot of examples.

No lectures.

No theory.

No bla, bla, bla.

Cases, models and guidelines.

The good and the bad ones.

And, yes, lessons too from the first mistakes…

This Summit wants to be a “reality check”.

So it’s not for Apple fans or enemies but for publishers, editors, visual journalists, marketing and advertising executives that are visionaries, pioneers but also practical doers.

Watch here Juan Senor, INNOVATION’s partner and UK director, interviewed last week in New York at the INMA World Conference.

And read here more details about the INMA/INNOVATION Oxford Tablet Summit.

If you are not yet registered, this is the time to attend the INMA/INNOVATION Oxford Tablet Summit.

The program has now more speakers and Apple has announced that one million iPads have been sold in just 28 days after the device’s introduction on April 3 and the same day the iPad 3G went on sale.

It took 74 days for the iPhone to sell its first million!

INNOVATION starts this week iPad work with one the European leading magazine companies in Paris.

And next week with one the largest North American newspapers.

All these first experiences will be presented at the Oxford Tablet Summit, so you will attend not a kind of “bla, bla, bla” meeting but a summit where to talk and exchange real experiences, know the right and wrong ways to go, the most innovative models, the best technology developments and the most creative design strategies.

Don’t miss it!

Register here.

As you know, Apple reports its quarterly earnings  today.

What we can expect?

Big numbers again, for sure.

Associated Prss goes wild and said a few minutes ago: Apple is expected to say Tuesday that its net income in the most recent quarter jumped 85 percent, boosted by brisk iPhone sales.

Apple said it expects earnings in the range of $2.06-$2.18 per share for the quarter and revenue of $11.0 billion-$11.4 billion.

Apple’s share price has been setting all-time highs since March 5, and last week it came near to $250.

That’s a 220% increase in 15 months.

With almost one million iPads sold in the first 17 day in the USA (remember that it took them 74 days to sell a million first-generation iPhones) the new Apple tablet could become a killing product for the next quarter.

Plus the new iPhone OS that can send the shares of Apple to the$300 mark.

But as always Apple will downplay the estimates… in order to beat them, again and again.

The San Francisco Chronicle explains all this very well.

UPDATE from Fortune:

The consensus on Wall Street, according to the latest poll by Thomson Financial, is that Apple will report earnings of $2.45 a share on revenue of $12.04 billion — which would make Q2 2010 easily Apple’s best second quarter ever.

Good news for Apple.

Bad news for its European fans.

Good news for their shareholders.

Bad news for Steve Jobs critics.

And good news for resellers.

As Reuters said: Apple decision to delay the sale of its iPad overseas may frustrate customers around the wortld but it brightened the day of at least a few crafty fans closer to home. So-called resellers, opportunists who scoop up hot products and sell them over the Web at inflated prices, have recently been charging premiums of more than $500 on sites like Craigslist or eBay for the iPad.

Bloomberg reports that Apple shipped more than 500,000 iPads during the first week and expects demand to exceed its supply for the next several weeks, according to a statement today.

So the iPad will be not sold outside the United States until the end of May.

The reaction of the markets was, again, very strong and the Apple shares hit new record numbers.

At $245.81 the investors were trading Apple very confident about the prospects of a tablet that could be in a few days another sold out product.

As Bloomberh said:

Apple has suffered from shortages before. Its iPhone 3G was sold out at almost all of its U.S. retail outlets 10 days after it was introduced in July 2008. A year later, soaring sales of the iPhone 3GS left it with too few units to meet demand.

UPDATE: Read here Why was Apple’s prediction on iPads so wrong?

Roy Greensland writes a good headline:

Would Murdoch have spent £650m on a print plant if the iPad had been around?

Well, his response will be YES.

But as Burda or Rusbidger, I am sure that they know that these are tha last huge printing presses that the buy.

Printing is not our business.

Vertical integration is not the right strategy.

Universities need buildings but they don’t own construction companies.

And the cars of Ford needed tires and many years ago owned big rubber plantations in Brazil.

Yes, the 10,000 km² of land of Fordlandia!

So are the new mobile digital tablets going to be the next BIG IDEA?

Yes.

But no media company needs to become an Apple, Microsoft, Samsung or Nokia…

We are not in the bottling business.

We are in the wine business.

Content matters.

Platforms, no.

Newsprint will survive.

Printing presses will survive…

But journalism will not need them like in the past.

More cheap, green and efficient digital platforms will be available in less than three years.

So cheap that media publishers will be more than happy to give these devices free to their subscribers.

When you see than in less than 10 days the photo application of The Guardian has generated 50,000 downloads, you know that the iPad and the digital tablet are here to stay.

Buyers and investors rule!

With more than 500.000 iPad sold just in one week, today the Nasdaq is delivering another strong message.

Apple shares were a few minutes ago over the $243 mark.

A record high.

In a few days Apple will present the financial results of the last quarter and the market will see how big are the estimated projections for the new quarter that will include for the first time the sales of the iPad.

And remember that Apple makes always very conservative projections in order to surpass its own estimates.

But this time conservative projections could include really big iPad numbers.

To asses the huge impact of the new iPad you don’t need to count or discredit the lines at the Apple stores.

Just read the best blog about Apple.

And read these wise words from the “boss of the bosses” Philip Elmer-DeWitt:

“Apple still has what it takes to imagine, design, build and deliver on schedule and at an affordable price a jewel-like piece of computer technology that inspires consumer lust.

There ought to be some soul searching going on right now among Apple’s competitors. For this is not the first time the company has picked up a discredited idea and created not just a successful product, but a whole new industry. There were MP3 players before the iPod. There were smartphones before the iPhone. And there were plenty of tablet computers before the iPad, even if they did run Windows.

Certainly building something like this is not an easy thing to do. It requires world-class design teams, dependable supply chains, impeccable quality control, first-rate marketing, an army of high-maintenance developers and the foresight to build a tightly integrated software environment in which all the parts — software, hardware, retail, networking — fit seamlessly together.”

Amen.

(Picture by Charis Tsevis)