Apple To Announce Subscription News Service At March 25 Event

BuzzFeed reported that on March 25, Apple is about to organize a special event during which it is anticipated to share information on its subscription news service.

The event would be the first important product announcement of the Cupertino giant in 2019. Previously, every year in March, Apple has revealed its new iPads during the company’s events. The report emphasizes that a subscription news service will become the event’s focus this year. Meanwhile, other products such as second generation Air Pods and a new iPad mini are not going to be announced this time.

The report arrives several hours after the announcement of The Wall Street Journal that the company has faced difficulties in negotiating with well-known news publishers over its subscription news service’s terms. For a subscription news service, the tech giant is looking forward to partnering up with publishers to offer readers with service that would cost about $10 each month to read articles that are normally paywalled. But as stated by the Journal, the proposal of Apple to split 50% of the revenue with publishers hasn’t gone well.

In an interview with Jim Cramer from CNBC, the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook has recently spoiled that Apple’ news services are coming this year. He said:

The launch of this subscription news service would be the latest effort of the company to increase its services revenue with a target of making $50 billion in 2020. This will be a critical benchmark for Apple to move forward after its struggle with sluggish sales of iPhones in China. After the company announced back in November that it would not report iPhone sales anymore, investors will be looking to its service business’ growth which during the holiday season achieved a revenue of $10 billion, an all-time high for Apple.

When being asked about this event on March 25, the company declined to confirm or give any comments.