It was announced today that the print version of my local newspaper the Northampton Chronicle & Echo is switching from daily to weekly issues, with an increasing emphasis on online news. They also announced they would be launching an iPad version of the newspaper, which is no good to me as I don't have, nor do I have any intention of getting, an iPad. Although I appreciate it can do more things than a Kindle.

It strikes me as most odd that publishers on the whole don't seem to be recognising the potential of the Kindle as a platform with the number of UK owners increasing all the time. One survey suggested 1 in 40 of us received one as a present last Christmas! I know all the main newspapers are on there now (minus the 'i' which I would most like to see) but the standard of some of the offerings is not great and the magazine selection is poor.

Does it simply boil down to the fact that the iPad is more flexible and they can do more things with it in terms of multimedia?

I tried a trial subscription of a newspaper on my Kindle and I found it very counter-intuitive to navigate around. It was easy to read the text, but photos have to be black & white etc.

The iPad allows for easier navigation with its touch screen and for colour photos (and video content if desired).

You're right, in the US there are plenty of news apps for the Kindle Fire. Until it can deliver colour and multimedia it will not reach critical mass in this area.

by the time you need colour and videos etc you may as well just visit the newspapers website

I subscribe to the Telegraph on the Kindle and I find it works really well. I'm not that interested in colour or photos - I just want the text laid out in a usable format.

Because its a threat to the newspapers themselves - all their advertising revenue is lost if nobody buys the paper. I think Apple pay them to have their app.

I doubt very much Apple pay them anything - Apple are popular enough not to have to

It is a very intuitive experience reading a magazine on the iPad. Can be done off line (so handy for train journeys) Like the interactivity of them.

With regards to newspapers, it's a swings and roundabout thing. Yes they lose averting revenue, but the gain a subscription (even if only an edition at a time - it isn't so easy to pass the paer on when you've finished with it.

The problem with publishing stuff on the Kindle is that to get any revenue back from them you're locked into an agreement with Amazon that they can get + sell your content digitally cheaper than anyone else. If they find out they're not getting it the cheapest, they withhold subscription revenue.

The chaps from 2600 Magazine have had all sorts of hell from Amazon over their Kindle version because they want to sell their mag at the same price for all digital platforms, and DRM-free.

I suspect it's because the Kindle is not brilliant at graphics (photos etc) and there is no colour. Maybe the advertisers don't like to see their posh, glitzy ads rendered so poorly.
Don't get me wrong, my wife has a Kindle and it's great, but only for fairly basic text and diagrams.

Apple pay lots of people lots of money.

Sky News don't mention the iPad every hour because "it's popular" or out of the goodness of their hearts.

Lots of tv shows have "Promotional consideration furnished by Apple" in the credits and again, it's a little naive to think it's because "it's popular":
http://www.imdb.com/company/co0014547/

That's advertsing - they give a film/tv programme a laptop or iphone/pod and it appears in the film/tv programme.

The person above saying newspapers are paid by Apple is not correct...same as Sky News are not paid by Apple...unless you have proof they do?

They don't. Sky develop the app at their cost, submit it to the App Store, Apple sell it and take 30% of the price, Sky get the other 70% (if it's a paid app). If it's a free app, Apple don't take anything and the company don't make anything other than ad revenue (if applicable.) Apple would never pay anyone to encourage them to be on the App Store....they don't need to, companies trip over themselves to get there.

The "promotional consideration furnished by Apple" is for free iPhones and iPads etc. to appear on TV/Movies. Apple give the producers them, they appear in the movie or TV show. Nout to do with Apps.

Kindle uses a proproterry MOBI / AMZ format.

Everything else, iPad, Android, Sony Reader, Kobo, B&N and pretty much everything else uses EPUB.

You bought the locked in format, from the locked in store, unfortunately you are now discovering the downsides.

There is over 4x more EPUB books than Kindles ecosystem.

But not 4x more worthwhile books available - generally if it's good and something worth reading there will be a Kindle version of it.

Most stuff is on AMZ, but I have come across quite a few now that are EPUB only, and Amazon catches up much later.

It's certainly going EPUB way, in the same way the mobile world is going Android, and iOS is a manufacturer specific increasingly marginalised format.

Yeah, that is true - I can see that happening with both EPUB and Android taking over eventually

I tried the Guardian on the Kindle and it was definitely handy. I subscribe to the dead tree edition, and it would have been nice to get the Kindle edition free as part of that (like you get with the iPad edition), but I assume the Kindle subscription model won't allow that.