Apple updated its news service, which will replace Newsstand, the company’s current news app, a few days ago in the attempt to take on Facebook. A number of such media groups as ESPN, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Daily Mail and others will produce content specifically designed for Apple’s revamped service.


Apple announced that News app would provide the latest stories, articles and publications on more than a million topics to allow readers to follow all their favorite news sources and discover new ones.

The New York Times would initially provide 33 articles daily, along with other publishers, including Vogue and Vanity Fair. The materials will be hosted and delivered through Apple’s platform, but the rights to the content will belong to the publishers, who will be enabled to sell premium ads in the app and keep the revenue. In other words, Apple’s service resembles Flipboard, which serves up news and other publications in a magazine-like format, which can adjust to location and other preferences.

Media groups admit they increasingly see a surge in demand for original, high quality journalism and are therefore happy to cooperate with Apple and other large platforms.

Apple’s Newsstand was introduced in 2011 and heralded as the savior of journalism market in the internet-connected, smartphone and tablet era, quadrupling digital magazine and newspaper revenue over the first year. The problem is that Newsstand recently started to hide content rather than highlight it, and many users switched to standalone apps designed to pull content from online services.

Apple updated its news app after Facebook revamped its own news service and announced cooperation with publishers to promote stories and articles.