Will you pay for a mobile version of the Wall Street Journal?
September 17th, 2009 | by Jhananthi Janakiraman |We’ve all gotten very used to getting tons of free content, including newspapers, on our smartphones. Well, indulging in reading on your mobile devices while moving is going to bite your pockets albeit a little if Wall Street Journal goes ahead with its plans to charge for mobile content access. Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp. made an announcement to this effect recently.
The charges will be only $1 a week for mobile Web access for subscribers to the Journal’s print edition and $2 weekly fee if you are a non-subscriber. Wall Street Journal offers online content to 1 million online subscribers. After the launch of its free mobile news app or “Mobile Reader”, it followed it up with a free app for BlackBerry phones and then the iPhone.
Now it seems like they’re changing their mind and have decided to charge for the news stories. How many free subscribers will be converted to paid remains to be seen. This step to monetize online news is for reducing dependence on the print edition, maybe a green initiative or maybe to increase revenues lost due to less advertising income also.
The Journal already charges for accessing news on its Web site which has been a successful model so far. Readers subscribing to the newspaper’s Web site can access the news on their phones with no charges if using a mobile browser to navigate to the material.
Also News Corp may charge for watching movies and TV shows on Hulu.com which is an Internet entertainment service too, if some sources are to be believed.
