The AP reports that Sports Illustrated is the next big magazine to launch its own iPad app. According to the AP, publishers see the iPad’s big display and touch-screen controls as a perfect fit for the content within their glossy pages, and Conde Nast’s success with its Wired app, which has sold 90,000 copies to date, has certainly started many publishers scrambling to release their own apps.

The app costs $4.99 for each weekly issue, the same price as the retail version, and is very photo-heavy and laid out very much like a regular hard copy of Sports Illustrated, with a Contents table, for example.

According to SI editor Terry McDonell, focus group research led the magazine to believe that the iPad app certainly has the potential to attract new readers to the magazine. “Most people said they’d pay just for the pictures,” he told the AP.

Among the interactive features included in the app is a pull-up menu that provides updated sports stats, and there’s also a facility to e-mail a story you like to a friend or share it on Facebook and Twitter right from your iPad.

Source: AP