Apple is stepping up plans to expand its News app, as the US tech group becomes an increasingly powerful force in driving revenues across the publishing industry.
The iPhone maker is considering adding new countries to the platform, which reaches about 125mn people every month in the US, Canada, UK and Australia, according to people familiar with the plans.
It was also considering building its locally focused news coverage in the UK, the people said, while adding its puzzles section in the country which is currently only available in the US and Canada.
Apple hopes that scaling up its News app, alongside work it is doing in improving advertising effectiveness, will help cement the tech group’s role as a growing source of revenues for many publishers.
The app forms part of Apple’s efforts to tie people to its products, but also a small part of the iPhone maker’s growing services business that includes Apple TV+ and Apple Pay worth about $96bn a year.
Although it does not produce much original journalism, Apple News — launched almost 10 years ago — has considerable influence over what tens of millions of people in the largest western countries read every day.
“From a brand awareness point of view it’s really important,” said David Higgerson, chief digital publisher at Reach, the UK’s largest regional newspaper owner. “We need to be there. It’s the front door to everyone’s iPhone.”
Apple News is part of the bundle that arrives with a new iPhone, giving it a head start over rival news apps for the home screen of users. Apple does not disclose how many people use its apps or how much money is generated from individual services such as its News platform. It declined to comment for this article.
Apple News is the top news app in most of the countries in which it operates. In the UK, Reach’s largest publication, the Mirror, has an average monthly audience of about 4.5mn from Apple News, close to a quarter of its overall readership.
Its impact comes as many media groups have been hit by a savage drop in digital revenues and readership following Meta’s decision to downplay news coverage as well as changes to Google’s algorithms, which some publishers complain has decreased traffic from search, and its use of artificial intelligence summaries of news and search requests.
Sean Cornwell, chief executive of Immediate Media, which publishes consumer magazines, said it got “significant business through Apple News”, especially for its BBC History magazine that he said had “hit seven figures” in regular readership.
“Apple News has sort of come out of nowhere, and very quickly has become quite a material revenue line,” said Cornwell. “The really attractive thing about Apple News is you’re taking content that you’ve already got and with very minor tweaks just send it to Apple to syndicate and they pay on a share of engaged minutes.”
Apple News and Apple News+, the free and subscription version of the app, offer a mixture of curated and personalised stories from magazines and newspapers, games, podcasts and newsletters.
Apple News+ has grown from 300 publishers at its launch five years ago to about 450 publishers globally. The service costs $12.99 a month in the US and £12.99 in the UK.
Apple News’s success has led to fierce debate in the media industry, split between those that have embraced the chance to reach a large global audience and others that see it as taking readers and revenues from their own platforms.
On the free service, money is made through advertising. Publishers can either keep 100 per cent of the revenue generated from ads that they can sell, or 70 per cent from ads sold by Apple or resellers.
Some publishers have been disappointed over their advertising revenues from Apple, with attempts to monetise their articles made more difficult by strict data protection rules that prevent them from targeting readers using third-party data or IP addresses. Advertisers typically want consumer data, which makes it less attractive overall.
“It’s very hard to do any targeting for data-led advertising revenue as Apple does not give access,” said Higgerson. “We are very much playing on Apple’s terms.”
Revenues from Apple News+ are pooled and shared between the tech group and publishers, paid out on engagement time of their articles.
For publishers, one of the biggest risks is that Apple will cannibalise possible subscribers that could be paying them directly for content.
Some media executives say it is an opportunity to reach a younger, less specialist audience, and “introduce their brand”. The audience tends to trend towards a more wealthy demographic, said one media boss, adding it was well read in the corridors of power in Westminster and Washington.
Apple’s own research has shown it reaches a different audience to the readers for most publishers, according to those familiar with the situation.
Apple News has about 100 editors working in teams across London, New York, Sydney and California, led by editor-in-chief Lauren Kern, a former New York Magazine editor.
The editorial team uses a mixture of curation and automation to pick which stories to promote. Those close to the team say there are no favourites, but some publishers say there are often similar names near the top, such as the Wall Street Journal in the US and the Guardian and Telegraph in the UK. The Financial Times is not available on Apple News.
There is internal debate and discussion about the most important ways to cover a story, people familiar with the team’s operation said, as well as the use of data to judge performance and whether or not a story is being read as well as expected.
News events tend to dominate the five or six top stories, which are picked by the Apple team. People familiar with the team said stories are chosen on “basic journalistic standards”, and will prioritise exclusives and original content as well as those with better sourcing and reporting.
“We’re looking for the most straightforward news that’s being told with as little kind of bias or point of view as possible,” said one. “That said, we do look for diversity publishers, not so much in balancing left or right, but just getting a bunch of different voices in.”
The piece has been updated to remove an incorrect reference to the New York Times appearing on Apple News
