Apple Stepping Up Plans to Expand News App to More Countries

Apple plans to scale up its News app by adding new countries to the platform beyond the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, according to the Financial Times.

The plans reportedly include building its locally focused news coverage in the UK, as well as bringing its puzzles section to the country which is currently limited to the US and Canada.

Apple News and Apple News+, the app's free and subscription-based versions, provide a blend of curated and personalized content, including stories from magazines and newspapers, as well as games, podcasts, and newsletters. The free service makes money purely through advertising, while the subscription service costs $12.99 a month in the US and £12.99 in the UK.

The renewed push comes alongside Apple's efforts to improve its advertising effectiveness, and aims to grow Apple's role as a source of revenue for publishers. Apple News currently reaches about 125 million people every month and feeds into the company's growing services business that includes Apple TV+ and Apple Pay, which is collectively worth about $96 billion a year.

The move comes amid significant drops in digital revenues across media groups, following Meta's decision to downplay news coverage as well as changes to Google's algorithms, which has decreased traffic from search, alongside the impact of AI summaries of news and search requests.

According to FT's sources, Apple's own research has shown that Apple News reaches a different audience to the readers for most publishers. The audience tends to trend towards a more wealthy demographic, one media boss told the newspaper, adding that it was "well read in the corridors of power in Westminster and Washington."

But the impact of Apple News has been a mixed blessing for publishers. Some groups have received significant business through the platform. However, attempts to monetise articles have been made more difficult by Apple's strict data protection rules that prevent advertisers from targeting readers using third-party data or IP addresses.