Time Travel: 2014

Of course, it was impossible for Elizabeth Nice to directly inform Lin Hui of Pingcheng's internal projects.

During the chat, Elizabeth Nice accidentally mentioned that Apple was trying to integrate print media resources and seemed to be taking action.

Taking advantage of this information, Lin Hui combined it with the information from his previous life and concluded that Pingchun was suspected of running a news aggregation APP.

The only news aggregation APP worth mentioning that Apple has built in the past and present life can only be Apple News.

Apple News is "Apple News" and is a news reading application developed by Apple.

Apple has high expectations for the Apple News software.

As soon as Apple News came out, it became the built-in news application of iOS.

Lin Hui had the impression that this software was released with the iOS 9 operating system.

This software originally appeared as an easter egg at Apple's WWDC 2015 developer conference.

Only one month after the previous Pingchun News software was launched, Ku/Ke announced that the monthly active users of the Pingchun News software had exceeded 40 million.

For a news reading application, this score is considered reasonable.

However, from the perspective of subsequent development, Apple News has not achieved greater success.

It wasn’t until November 2016 that Apple News’ monthly active users exceeded 50 million.

Compared with the huge user base of Apple devices, such a user growth rate is really difficult to justify.

In addition, in Lin Hui's opinion, Apple News is a very bad Apple software.

Jufan Pingchun is involved in new areas of software.

Most of the time, Pingchun's approach is to reinvent the wheel or find another way.

But when it comes to the Apple News software, what Apple does is very different from what it did in the past.

Judging from the development of Pingchun News in the previous life, except for the creation of Pingchun News Format (ANF), Lin Hui did not see a new approach, let alone reinvent the wheel. He only saw endless integration.

As for Pingchun’s thoughts?

Apple’s idea for the “Apple News” software is similar to Facebook’s idea for “Instant Articles.”

They all hope to integrate media and independently produced content into a complete "package" and user experience.

Make the platform an outlet for media content, while media and content providers only focus on their own content production.

Although the idea is very clear, the idea of ​​​​cutting off the media and content providers and users is obviously a wishful thinking, or seeking skin from a tiger.

In the West, why would media and content providers with considerable voice willingly stay behind the scenes?

The established hardware platform and excellent ecosystem are Apple’s own advantages in getting involved in the news field.

This advantage is merely an attraction to users.

But for media and content creators who cares

Do not substitute the development of domestic media for the situation of overseas media.

Many overseas print media that are keen on making big news have long captured the inevitable trend of the digital age.

So we started to actively embrace digitalization and actively carry out digital transformation very early.

Relying on free traffic, but also not forgetting to create high-quality content and build a paywall.

Such as "The Economist", "New York Times", "Bloomberg", "The New Yorker", "Wall Street Journal" and so on.

Many traditional print media have done quite well in digital transformation.

Lin Hui remembered a piece of news he had read in his previous life:

In the second quarter of 2018, The New York Times had more than 2.9 million digital subscribers.

Digital subscriber revenue reached $99 million in the quarter alone.

Just relying on subscription revenue, the revenue in a single quarter was more than 600 million yuan.

This ability to attract money is simply amazing.

Overseas media, which have the right to speak and financial resources, even dare to point fingers at politics.

In this case, who cares about your Pingchun's ecology?

Real money is what matters.

Everything else is easy to talk about, but touching the cheese is impossible.

In short, although Apple is ambitious in terms of news aggregation.

But when faced with uncompromising authoritative media and high-quality content creators, Apple still encountered a lot of troubles.

In the previous life, it was not until 2018 that Apple mobilized its financial capabilities to acquire Texture, an old app-based digital magazine subscription service provider, for US$465 million and integrated Texture into Apple News.

The road for Pingchun News has become easier.

However, no matter how Pingcheng News develops, the relationship does not seem to be very big.

After all, services like iTunes, iBook, and Apple News have basically nothing to do with mainland China.

But if you look internationally, the trends of Internet giants are still worthy of attention.

At least it's worthy of Lin Hui's attention.

After all, Lin Hui’s true original intention is to build a company that is truly powerful and influential internationally.

This is not to say that we should rest on our laurels in the country.