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2011

FLIPBOARD PLANS TO BECOME A ONE-STOP ENTERTAINER; IPHONE APP COMING UP TOO

September 2, 2011 0

Flipboard has been planning to move out of its shell as it is entering the world of TV shows and films which would be incorporated directly into their existing app. Flipboard has been successful as a magazine and news aggregation app and its move ahead seems to make the Chairman of the company happy. Mike McCue, Chairman and Chief Executive of Flipboard said that the company on the whole is attempting to strike deals with studios so that it could partner them and offer TV episodes and movies. This would turn Amazon, Hulu and Netflix as their direct competitors. However, there were no details as to whom would they partner for this venture.

Flipboard currently has articles featuring from magazines, news sites and popularly is even incorporating social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Their iPad app has been a hit in the app store and has seen users making more than 3 million downloads till now. The venture capital funding has even had 60.5 million funded till now, but it is still quite ripe for varied expansion.

The addition of videos is excepted to come out somewhere in the next year as McCue said that he would begin working on that project at the end of 2011. For the expansion, McCue even said that they are even hoping to come up with an eBook selling service too. It has not been long since Flipborad started to display ads which was in terms with a shared revenue agreement with publisher Conde Nast. Flipboard has been trying to expand its base and more of it trying to create a one-stop portal for their current fans and would-be fans’ entertainment needs.

For the profits, it is expected that there would be an operating profit in 2012 which according to McCue’s plans would see a reinvestment. The incorporation of the new services to Flipboard’s text-based news app would be interesting to note. It may therefore be a big task on their shoulders, but looking at its popularity, it can surely hit the right chords to succeed.

Again, Flipboard even has plans to move out of the iPad-only mode and move in the hot and demanding iPhone world. The app for iPhone can be in the app store anytime in the weeks to come. The plans however extend even for the iPod touch version too.

General partner at Index Ventures, Danny Rimer said that they were trying to create the largest company possible and that he had faith that the revenue migrating from the display advertisement is ‘a very big opportunity’ for the company. Index Ventures has helped fund Flipboard. Flipboard even has Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in the investor list.

The company has The Economist, The New Yorker and The Telegraph in the likes as for their media partnerships. McCue had noted that as with Flipboard, one can read any article for free, he had hoped that even if other publishers had worked with them, their articles would had even looked better. reason being that the app gives a reader an option to scroll conveniently and turning pages would be even done by merely clicking on an icon. The stats noted that the readers using Flipboard usually spend 45 minutes to an hour in a day’s time frame mostly looking at articles.