Apple Has Acquired the iPad Publishing Platform Prss

[RaduTyrsina]

Yesterday, my colleague Phil informed you about a recent rumor which was claiming that Apple had acquired magazin platform Prss. Now, this information has been made official as Apple has confirmed the purchase of Prss, giving TechCrunch its standard acquisition statement:

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Prss is a platform that makes it easy to create iPad-compatible magazines using tools that don’t require any knowledge of code. So, basically, this is a magazine-focused version of iBooks Author, and what Apple could try to get out of this is better native publishing tools for digital outlets.

Prss is a pretty young company, having launched in 2013 as the result of the work of the founding team’s creation of Trvl, one of the first iPad newsstand magazines. Here are some more details of its history:

It was the first iPad-exclusive newsstand publication when it debuted in 2010, and featured a photo-rich design. Trvl won multiple awards, garnered very positive reviews in iTunes and was featured in a Tim Cook keynote speech during WWDC in 2012. Prss was designed to leverage the expertise Trvl co-founders Jochem Wijnands and Michel Elings into an open platform any iPad magazine publisher could use.

The iBooks Author was introduced in 2012 as a free tool publishers could use to build content for iBooks. So perhaps with the acquisition of Prss, Apple is trying to improved its service and try to stimulate more original content to be created. Also, Apple could be looking to get more indie content to be added to the Newsstand catalog.

Source: TechCrunch