I am holding my full judgment on the price of the Wall Street Journal on the iPad, WSJ announced the monthly subscription on the iPad will be 17.99 per month. With the Kindle version at 14.99 per month I suspect the $3.00 per month increase is associated with either rich media content included, access to the online version, the “Apple Tax”, or News Corp exploiting the “Apple Tax”. I do not like the Kindle version of the WSJ so I look forward to seeing if the iPad version is any better. The content in the WSJ is extremely valuable to me, but the format on the Kindle just missed the mark. I am not sure if this is Kindle specific or just the challenge with how I like to read the print version of the journal.
Cost Comparison
I did a break down of the cost of the Wall Street Journal in a variety of formats, but lets do the analysis again. Getting the WSJ on the iPad is almost 81% more expensive than a subscription print version today. I am not a math major but if your costs go down and your price increases your going to make more money. The journal, like many magazines will have advertisements so I can only imagine the price if it was not ad subsidized. For me Esquire magazine is the one that is really getting it. They are delivering mostly the same content, just in a new, cheaper format so they can reduce the price. If the cost was the same as the print version I would have no issue, but costing more than print seems criminal.
| Format | Per Week | Per Month | Annually | % Increase |
| WSJ Online | $1.99 | $103.48 | ||
| WSJ Print | $2.29 | $119.08 | 15.08% | |
| WSJ Kindle | $14.99 | $179.88 | 51.06% | |
| WSJ iPad | $17.99 | $215.88 | 20.01% |
One thing I wonder is if they will offer the free 2 week trial subscription on the iPad like they do on the Kindle. I plan to try the subscription version and the online version since WSJ has gone the extra mile to build an iPad friendly site. I am not cheap but I’m not stupid enough the believe such a price increase can be called a convenience tax. Most people try to use the news stand price of the WSJ when doing a price compare which is significantly higher. You have to compare Apples to Apples like I did above.
[Image Source WSJ]