When Apple launched the iPad last year it was heralded as the device that would kill magazines and newspapers as we know them today. But now, a year later with nearly 14 million iPads on the market, there are still relatively few magazines available on the iPad and those that are available are seeing rapid declines in their numbers. The media darling of the iPad magazine world, Wired, saw a drop from 100,000 copies in June to just 23,000 in November, and the story is similar for Glamour, Vanity Fair, and Men’s Health.

For consumers, expectations form an iPad version of a magazine are high. According to a recent article in Advertising Age, consumers expect to see something unique and different on the iPad, something they wouldn’t get by picking up a paper copy of the magazine. Creating a unique experience means an added expense for publishers for a declining audience. However, a recent article in the NY Times stated that the most common reason that magazines on the iPad are given low ratings is for their cost. Readers don’t feel its right that they need to pay cover price for each issue, even if they already subscribe today to a print edition.

For publishers, there were a few hurdles in bringing titles online. For organizations accustomed to the typical model of offering single issues on the newsstand and subscriptions delivered directly to reader, the iPad introduced a new hybrid business model. From the early days Apple talked about adding support for subscriptions, but to-date this is still “in the works”. Recent signs point to Apple rolling this out by June 2011, along with a new iPad newspaper from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. called “The Daily”. Till now, publishers have been forced to sell individual issues for the iPad through the app store or push subscribers through and awkward re-direction to their own site to process subscriptions. Apple has now given publishers till June 30, 2011 to transition over to a model that uses the in-app purchase function for buying content, which means the app store will become the only distribution channel.

It’s been a dismal time for Google with the discontinuation of Google Wave, but some interesting news has surfaced about the market share figures for the Google Android operating system. In the second quarter of 2010, Android Smartphone shipments have surged by a whopping 886%. During the same period, RIM saw a 41% jump in Blackberry sales, allowing it to maintain almost a 50% market share lead over the iPhone. These are some interesting numbers, but why is the Android seeing such an incredible increase? One possible issue inflating these figures is the definition of what constitutes a “Smartphone”. While one would expect a Smartphone to be a robust, app-running device, for the purposes of market share data, pretty much any device that has the power to surf the web and is running Android to do so is counted as an “Android powered Smartphone”.

What does this higher than expected Android market share data mean for businesses contemplating getting into the mobile market? Well, the good news is that the market is narrowing down to just three major players in terms of OS (until Windows finally comes out with its Windows Phone7 OS). The even better news is that companies now have a viable delivery alternative to the iPhone for rich mobile content. The Android operating system supports Flash and has its own App Store. With its skyrocketing adoption level, Android is quickly becoming another channel for reaching consumers and it’s one that companies in the mobile space should have on their radars.

For the second installment of our Best Practices for eLibrary series, we’re going to examine how content drives many decisions involved with creating and using an eLibrary. Knowing your product, from media content to published format, will not only make your decision clearer, but the process of adopting an eLibrary much less daunting.

The first question to ask in relation to content considerations is around format. Do you have a stack of magazine back-issues or newspaper archive that doesn't currently exist in digital format? Many publishers encounter this problem and see it as a major roadblock in transitioning content online. However, there are a variety of ways to have your content digitized with or without optical character recognition. Commonly known as OCR, this character recognition usually adds time to the process, but provides users with a far superior experience in the long run by allowing in-document searching. There are many different ways to digitize print versions, and your eLibrary provider should have partners and specific suggestions to meet your needs.

There was an interesting story today on Marketing Charts about the number of internet users that read newspapers online. Not surprisingly, ComScore Media Matrix states that three out of five internet users claim to read newspapers online each month. This means that nearly 123.9 million unique visitors accessed and read a newspaper online in May. By comparison, about 61% of the total online population in America relies on the web for their main source of news. This means that many of these contacts are reading online newspapers as part of their total news consumption.

These numbers really are compelling. In the past, online publishing was not deemed to have the audience or the credibility that it does today. I believe that the December 2009 rules passed by the BPA contributed greatly to legitimizing this industry. These rules allow publishers to count digital editions as part of their readership numbers.

However, for an industry that is growing so quickly and is showing strong revenue potential for advertising, it is one many publishers are still holding back on entering. With the new ePublishing technologies on the market and the lower cost and barriers to entry why aren’t more publishers openly embracing this channel?