James Murdoch: Apps Are Destroying The Newspaper

James Murdoch, head of News Corp in Asia and Europe, is not a big fan of news apps it seems, having described them as cannabalising newspaper sales. Mr Murdoch did offer praise to iTunes and the iPad for what he called a 'frictionless' experience in selling their content.

However, he was not so chuffed at the prospect of mobile phone apps, which he saw as engaging customers more than news websites and thus supplanting the newspaper itself to a greater degree. Mr Murdoch said:

"The problem with the apps is that they are much more directly cannibalistic of the print products than the website. People interact with it much more like they do with the traditional product."

The comments come on the back of News Corp setting up pay walls on its newspapers websites. The move has cost News Corp around 90% of their online readership and apparently they have just 105,000 paying subscribers for their websites. A far cry from the millions that visit the Guardian free site.