idio Platform

A few weeks ago I wrote a review of the best iPhone apps that magazines had produced. You can read it here. Some of these apps were paid, some free with advertising included, and some just me-too apps offering a basic rendering of the publishers RSS feed.

If you follow iPhone news, you will have heard that a new operating system was released for the handset on Tuesday. There were several improvements, and one which didn’t receive much of a fanfare might prove to be very valuable for publishers. The Appstore now allows developers to build in an “in-app” purchase option to new applications, allowing users to buy additional services from inside existing applications. Much has been said about micropayments as a funding mechanism for content, and although this doesn’t allow a full iTunes-style experience as some have envisioned, it does provide a first step. Additional content can be purchased by the user, through the original application.

Men’s Health magazine has been the first to recognise this possibility, and they have built a fitness app which delivers intructions and a personal tracker for a huge range of workouts and exercises. The app costs $1.99 to download, and additional content (“expansion packs”) are available for purchase – with titles such as “The Ultimate Abs Pack” and “Huge Arms in a Hurry.” In addition to these, they intend to sell feature stories, and other products using this system.

The potential uplift in average-revenue-per-user that the in-app purchases could give should certainly be explored immediately by publishers looking to monetize the iPhone as a delivery platform. As with every Apple product, the process of taking money out of the users pocket is made painless (even pleasurable!), and with a good stream of quality content products, publishers should be able to build small groups of loyal customers around each brand application.