Apple ‘tablet’: Can Jobs save the news business?

Later today in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Steve Jobs will unveil Apple's tablet reader. Times could hardly be better for the secretive technology company: a hot new product; spectacular profits of $3.4 billion in the last quarter of 2009; market share up in every sector of its business.

Whether it turns out to be called the iTablet, the iSlate or the iPad – or it gets a name the rumour-mongers haven't come up with – Apple's gizmo is exciting, no doubt about it.

But no one is more excited about it than publishing and print media companies. To them, the tablet represents a vision of the future that does not involve their extinction. The New York Times thinks it may give these industries "a chance to undo mistakes of the past”.

Under current thinking, the print business has nearly destroyed itself by allowing consumers to become accustomed to information for free.

Apple will reportedly market its new machine as a way to read news and books but also as a way to charge for content. Almost everyone, except for the Guardian and state-funded BBC, accepts that the era of limitless, free information is drawing to a close. Last week, the New York Times announced that it would soon start charging for access over and above occasional use.

Increasingly, it is pointed out that even advertising-dependent media output isn't actually free - we buy the products that in turn allow companies to buy advertising space.

But what Apple has proved with its iPod and iPhone is that consumers will purchase content if it is made palatable and easy enough. The Devil's bargain is that you have let Steve Jobs be the gatekeeper to your customer and price-fixer of your product.

Still, it appears Jobs's heart is in the right place. He helped the music industry survive with iTunes and may be able to do the same for publishing.

"Steve believes in old media companies and wants them to do well," someone familiar with his thinking told the Times. "He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press.”

At least three publishers, Hearst, Conde Nast and Time, have created mock-ups of their magazines for Apple tablets. The New York Times Company, too, is developing a tablet version of the paper.

"Apple upended the smartphone market with the introduction of the iPhone, and it's likely that they will, if they enter the tablet market, lead the pace there," says Conde Nast editorial director Thomas Wallace. "2010 is going to be the year of the tablet."

Whatever the tablet turns out to be, and whatever it becomes, nothing seems to be stopping Apple's explosive growth. In addition to 8.7m iPhones and 21m iPods, the company sold 3m computers in the last quarter. Its market capitalisation is now $183 billion. As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told the LA Times, Apple's business is "quite simply on fire".