Conde Nast to Internally Announce Plans for iPad Today

Conde Nast plans to announce iPad versions of Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Glamour in an internal memorandum today, according to the New York Times.

GQ will have a tablet version of its April issue ready. Vanity Fair and Wired will follow with their June issues, and The New Yorker and Glamour will have issues in the summer

Conde Nast will use these publications to test pricing, advertising, and digitizing approaches. “We need to know a little bit more about what kind of a product we can make, how consumers will respond to it, what the distribution system will be,” said Thomas J. Wallace, editorial director of Condé Nast.


Wallace told the NY Times that these magazines were chosen for their range, "They are representative of the company, right? GQ is men. Glamour is women. Vanity Fair is a dual audience. The New Yorker is unique with its periodicity, and therefore it's also more news- or text-heavy, and it's a slightly older audience."

Wired has been working with Adobe to create a tablet version of its magazine; however, Conde's CEO Chuck Townsend tells MediaMemo that he can't fully embrace this version unless Apple embraces Flash.

Conde will have "two parallel development tracks going until the relationship between Apple and Adobe is clear," Townsend said.

Apparently the ability to export the Flash based application to IPA format doesn't have him convinced. Perhaps Adobe should seek Apple's approval for this capability rather than repeated bash the iPhone and iPad for not running Flash.


When asked if he would prefer the Wired model - with integrated videos, interactive ads etc - if Apple was OK with Flash, Townsend said, "the answer would be an easy yes."

[New York Times]