As a result, media companies will soon be pushing their best and most timely content through their apps instead of their Web sites. Meanwhile, video-content services are finding that they don’t even need to bother with the Web and the browser. Netflix, for one, is well on its way to sending movies and TV shows directly to TV sets, making their customers’ experience virtually indistinguishable from ordering up on-demand shows by remote control. It’s far from a given that this shift will generate the kinds of revenue media companies are used to: for under-30s whelped on free content, the prospect of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars yearly for print, audio, and video (on expensive new devices that require paying AT&T $30 a month) is not going to be an easy sell.
Yet lack of uptake by young people will hardly stop the rush to apps. There’s too much potential upside. And with Apple in the driver’s seat, the rhetoric of “free” is becoming notably more muted. In rolling out the iPad, Steve Jobs has been aggressive and, to date, unapologetic about policing apps deemed unacceptable for the iPad store (or apps whose creators hold opinions that are anathema to Apple’s corporate interests or sense of universal order). And Apple has so far refused to enable Flash, the Adobe technology that runs 75 percent of all videos seen on the Web, and is launching its own ad-sales platform, presumably to control and monetize traffic on its devices.
