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Daily Maverick launches iMaverick, SA's first iPad daily newspaper

Daily Maverick today announced that it will launch iMaverick, South Africa‘s first daily newspaper specifically designed for the iPad. Due to premier in August 2011, iMaverick is currently being promoted with an exclusive offer that enables consumers to sign up for R395.00 pm and receive an iPad 2 bundled with the subscription to iMaverick.
“œThe iPad is transforming people‘s experience of news and content. We‘re taking the next logical step with Daily Maverick by launching a fully-featured newspaper that helps  readers understand the world by giving them the best read on their tablet every day.“
“œIt makes sense that a subscription based, daily iPad newspaper is the next generation of Daily Maverick. We‘ve been credited for upping the game of providing news, analysis and commentary since we launched,“ says Branko Brkic, the founder of Daily Maverick and editor of the soon to be launched iMaverick.
“œSet to debut in August 2011, iMaverick will be a daily newspaper for South Africans who care about their brains and want to understand what‘s happening in the world for the cost of a daily cup of coffee. Anyone can distribute information – all you need to do is subscribe to a news agency and cut and paste articles. We take a radically different approach with original, crusading journalism and opinion that seeks to challenge people‘s thinking. We create understanding,“ says Brkic.
Daily Maverick has enjoyed solid growth since its debut late 2009 due to a philosophy of offering the best quality news-content by an award-winning editorial team. This has seen Daily Maverick grow from a zero base to 100,000 unique visitors in 18 months.
“œWe will extend our editorial team to include some big name journalists to deliver this country‘s daily iPad newspaper every weekday from mid August,“ says Brkic. “œWe‘ll be making full use of the iPad‘s technology, glorious colour, full connectivity and multimedia capabilities to again challenge the way that news is reported on in this country and reshape the boundaries of journalism with our subscription-based newspaper.“
Brkic says that Daily Maverick will continue to publish at www.dailymaverick.co.za as a free offering for readers. “œiMaverick will radically extend the beats we traditionally cover, and will combine long and short form writing so readers can see all the important news at a glance, but also delve deep into the issues they care about. .“ Subscribers to the daily iPad newspaper can expect to see regular coverage of business, politics, current affairs, sport, entertainment, technology and health.
Readers who want to receive an iPad 2 to enjoy iMaverick can subscribe to SA‘s first daily tablet newspaper for R395 per month over 24 months.
For more information on how to subscribe please go to www. imaverick.co.za
 

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10 Comments

  1. It’s an interesting move by Maverick, but well targeted at their community. 
    But, my question remains (still unanswered by them) is, is it a native iPad app (ie bought from the app store) or is it a web app (HTML5 etc) app ? In their FAQ’s it states that it can be read on Android & BB as well, but designed for the iPad screen, which makes me believe it is the latter ? 
    If that is the case then surely “selling” it as an iPad app doesn’t makes sense, and makes me think of the phrase “Climbing on the Bandwagon” ? 
    Just my 2c worth ? 

    1. Interesting points.
      Building a native app for iOS, Android and BB OS is very expensive and time consuming especially with limited ROI because of our small market. HTML5 would be a great play but you would loose the ‘impulse buy’ customer and frictionless payments of the app store.
      There are very few Android tablets in SA (the small galaxy tab is not a great fit for a magazine style layout newspaper) and the Playbook won’t be arriving any time soon (RIM is also only bringing in the wifi version first which won’t sell [imo] at all)
      I’m all for HTML5 like FT.com has done (app.ft.com) but I think iMaverick is (should be) a native iPad app and their FAQ likely refers to something else or is a technical mistake.

      1. I’ve also been trying to figure whether it will be native or not. Considering that you can transfer subscriptions if you lose your iPad. I’m starting to think the ‘accounts’ isn’t even Apple accounts.

    2. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Arial}
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      My money is on the fact that they will develop the app on a cross-platform like Phonegap. That will allow them to have iPhone, iPad, BB and Android apps out there. Since Phonegap is really a presentation framework for HTML5 based apps they can could extend the HTML5 based app to a pure web platform. Having said that I don’t think we’ll have the same polish (and fancy UI) that some iPad only publications/applications have.
      I think that Maverick’s readers are a crowd that probably own iPhones, iPads, Kindles and BBs, they’re also more likely to pay for a subscription. This crowd is also the ideal crowd to sell an application to.
      I understand how some people are confused as to why the launch offer is an iPad-bundle offer. I suspect they’re testing the waters. The have said that they will offer just the app to existing iPad owners so no-one is loosing here. I wouldn’t be surprised is Core Group (or Apple) gave them a great deal on iPads to also test the waters. I think they’re trying to tempt botential iPad buys that have been waiting for a reason to buy it. I also think that getting an iPad on terms might be appealing to some, no me personally but I suspect some people might be able to swallow paying R399 a month rather than R4300 then still another (my thumb-suck of) R150-R200 subscription.
      Good on them. I think they’ve created lots of free exposure and buzz. I look forward to seeing what the app looks like.

  2. My 2 Q’s.
    Will this be content that is not on the current website, in which case what am I paying for? Or will they dilute the current website?
    Second – will it update during the day as news breaks, or will it be a static one off download at 7.360am, in which case they miss the boat of what the internet really is (much as The Daily does).

  3. Daily newspaper? It looks like a magazine?
    Cool move – Maverick is a magazine by heart… this is their ticket back into publishing.. tablet publishing. 
    I don’t think they have the html5 skills to make this happen – html5 is still very niche and new.
    Its likely iOS shell with the layouts loading off the web as images or xml and images.. who knows.
    Our tablet marketing is growing slowly… this is a great, early play
    Corner the market 

  4. Hi guys, Styli from the Daily Maverick here. Going to try my best to answer most of the questions posed here.
    iMaverick is a newspaper that will be delivered via an app. The experience will be similar to other publishers, (like Time & Vanity Fair) where the app is free to download, but in order to download editions of the newspaper, you will need to be a paying subscriber. We will be using the subscription engine in the Appstore to manage accounts that are signed up in iTunes. Out of app sign-ups will be processed through iMaverick.cozaThe newspaper will be utilise HTML5, although we will be initially be focusing on bringing great news, analysis and opinions, and holding back on gizmos and gadgetry. Stories and ads will have multimedia capabilities for an allround richer reading experience.Where dailymaverick.co.za will continue to publish the same amount of free stories, iMaverick will have roughly 5 times as many stories each day as the website.We will only be publishing one single edition of iMaverick, and only sending breaking news alerts for major stories, with Daily Maverick carrying these breaking news stories. The website would still obviously be accesible via the iPad browser.The app is custom built for the iPad, and only once we have this bedded down, will we begin dev work on the other tablets.
    Hope this helps, and thanks for the interest in iMaverick.

    1. Thanks for popping by! Gluck! 
      Sucks that Apple won’t share your subscriber details with you. Thats one big issue with the Apple subs model IMO.

  5. We know that iPad has so many advanced features. IPAD is to change the experience of people and new content. iMaverick the daily newspaper for South Africans.
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  6. Best of Luck ! to daily Maverick for launches SA’s first iPad daily newspaper. Daily morning we all need a newspaper. It is a part of our life. So now if you have iPad than you do not need a newspaper at your home.
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