Jobs: iPad is an opportunity to monetize content

Apple CEO Steve Jobs yesterday said the iPad would help content creators and news organizations monetize online video if they followed Apple's iTunes model and priced content aggressively.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Jobs advised media companies to keep their prices low.

"As one of the largest sellers of content on the Internet today, Apple's lesson is price it aggressively and go for volume," he said. "I believe people are willing to pay for content. I believe it in music. I believe it in media. And I believe in it in news content."

Jobs also said the move away from desktop computers to mobile devices like the iPad would continue to accelerate, turning the PC into a niche product. "They will still be around," he said. "This transformation is going to make some people uneasy."

Of course Jobs also was asked about Apple's decision to abandon Adobe's Flash on the iPad, opting instead to rely on HTML5.

"We didn't start off to have a war with Flash," he said. "It wasn't until we shipped the iPad that Adobe started to raise a stink about it. We didn't raise a stink about it. We weren't trying to have a fight. We just decided not to use one of their products in our platform."

And, he said, consumers haven't seemed to mind.

"If the market tells us we are making the wrong choices, we listen to the market." Jobs said, adding that if people believe Apple has made the right decision, the iPad will continue to sell well.

"If we succeed, they'll buy them, and if we don't, they won't," he said. "People seem to be liking the iPad. We sold one every 3 seconds since we launched them."

For more:
- see this New York Times article

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