iPad Usage is Shooting Through the Roof

We yesterday introduced a straightforward way for our publishing partners to access Google Analytics reports for any of the individual titles that we host for them. Data is available in the amazingly atomic detail supported by Google Analytics, for each title, issue, and page. Also, Google makes it very practical to select specific date ranges, whereas the data we had previously collected from our own logs was lumped together in coarse monthly buckets. The traffic data is aggregated for each magazine, so there should be no privacy issues. Furthermore, each publisher has access to his own data, and stuff that is generic or 'cross publication' is not reported via the Google system. The data spigot for each magazine can be switched on as soon as a publisher sends us their Google Analytics code.....

I love the way Google Analytics can provide flexible geographical breakdowns of the data it aggregates:

















33 visits from Bari and 71 from Bologna.

Whenever we collect data on our users we are surprised by the extent to which the iPad is making such a big difference to the digital magazine business. Here are a few data points:

• In the last year we have had more visitors to our website from iPad users than from the iPhone (this time a year ago there were no iPads anywhere outside Apple)
• These iPad users read/access twice as many pages as iPhone users
• The iPhone usage has also shot up in the last year. Six times as many visitors this year as in the previous 12 months.
• iPod usage is also significant and is at about the same level as Android usage. Much smaller than iPhone use but, surprisingly, slightly more sticky (both Android and iPod are slightly stickier than the iPhone)
• Blackberry and Symbian use is low, and Windows barely registers (guess that is Windows 7?)
  
• Our aggregate visits from mobile users (March 14, 2010- March 14 2011) have increased more than 10 times from the previous year (1000%+)
  
• Looking at one particular magazine which has been quite popular on the iPhone/iPad, it has had over 20,000 freemium app downloads in the last year and roughly one in 6 of those freemium downloads has led to a sale.
  
• We regard 1 in 6 as a good conversion rate. The conversion rate for different magazines varies enormously.
• Price is a big factor in the conversion process.
• iPad sampling has marginally outdistanced iPhone sampling. This is really surprising since there must be at least 10 times, perhaps 20 times, as many iPhones as iPads in the market for this particular magazine (which has mostly a UK circulation).
  
• We do not yet have relative conversion rates but we would expect the conversion rate to be significantly weighted to the iPad -- we know this from smaller samples.

I guess it is possibly worrying that Google know so much about our system, our traffic and the usage of our publisher's digital assets. Google know so much about all of us. But they do make it easy for web site owners to find out what they know! Apple must have just as much detail on the use of the apps we provide for iTunes, but like all other Apple developers we have access to very little of what Apple must know about the usage of apps.

On the other hand our publishers are now in the position that they have access to what Google know about the digital distribution of their magazines and something of what Apple know. Google and Apple are pretty much ignorant of the other guy's data. At Exact Editions we see it as our task to help publishers get their digital magazines on as many platforms as possible and to maintain an overall control of that distribution and data. That ultimately gives publishers a position of some strength.

Five Osprey Apps - Military History on the iPhone

Exact Editions and Osprey Publishing announced the launch of an initial group of apps for the iPhone/iPad market today. There is a full press release here.

Free samples of the books are available through iTunes from these icons

Philippi 42 BC:






The First Crusade:






Warsaw 1944:





Fredericksburg 1862:





Iwo Jima 1945:






These apps illustrate a couple of important points for publishers who are considering the iPhone/iPad market.

1. The Osprey Campaign books are richly illustrated book and they show why an 'app' approach is much more natural and scaleable for highly illustrated works. The quality of the illustrations, the battle plans, and maps goes to the heart of the value that Osprey offer its readers. An eBook of the same resource would miss much of the value if it ignored the illustrations (cf yesterday's blog about books as apps)
2. The iPhone gives the publisher an excellent forum in which to showcase richly illustrated books. So the 'freemium' offering which Exact Editions will now offer as the standard way of presenting books and magazines on the iPhone, should be thought of as a way of promoting and sampling the quality of the book to an audience which initially will not have to pay a cent. The Osprey titles have about 8% of their content available through the free sample.
   

Is Apple Playing Device Leapfrog?

Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, a music player which became gradually a media player. Then in 2007 Apple introduced the iPhone which was a personal communication device as well as a media player. In 2010 we have the introduction of the iPad which is a really grown up iPod. A general purpose media player. Apple has completely wrong-footed all its potential competitors (Sony, Nokia, Microsoft, Vodafone etc) weaving between these two technology strands in building its magical consumer hold. All the mobile phone companies are massively at a disadvantage in not having a credible iPod Touch device. Notice that the jumps in the game of leapfrog are getting shorter {media-pad, five years, phone, two and half years, media-pad.....}; because development and market sophistication is following Moore's law, so we can expect the next jump to come before the end of 2011. On form the next jump will be to a next-level communications device. My money is on a super iPhone which does multi-person conference calls. At that stage Apple will be in a good position to unveil its plans for the Social dimension for all this personal, mobile, computing and media enjoyment.

The social graph was noticeably missing from the iPad introduction. So were cameras. Superimposing video on social networks is the next big step for Apple. That is the context in which book and magazine publishers should be thinking about apps...They do not yet connect, but that will be the next step.