Re/Code Says Apple Will Axe Newsstand, Launch 'Flipboard-Like' Feature

Apple Inc. AAPL will take the axe to its four-year-old Newsstand feature, and replace it with a product likened to Flipboard, according to a report on re/code.

Re/code, citing unnamed sources, contradicted a report in Friday's Financial Times that said Apple would reduce the 30 percent fee that media companies currently pay on subscriptions sold via Newsstand.

Publishers will keep 100 percent of the advertising they sell within the Flipboard-like app, while Apple will help sell unsold inventory and take a cut at rates that one publisher described as "very favorable," re/code said Monday.

Apple will continue to take a 30 percent cut of revenue from subscriptions sold through the publisher's own apps, re/code said.

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The new app will offer samplings of content from big media partners including ESPN, the New York Times, Conde Nast and Hearst, according to re/code.

Newsstand has come in for some bitter criticism from publishers like Glenn Fleishman, former executive editor of The Magazine, which shut down last year.

Fleishman last year called Newsstand "a wasteland for publications that only use it as an adjunct" and said Apple has "more or less left it to rot."

Re/Code noted that some of Newsstand's partners complained that the service "tended to bury content."

Apple's move follows efforts from Facebook Inc FB and Snapchat, as well as Flipboard, to publish content directly on its own apps, re/code noted.

Despite apparent dissatisfaction with Newsstand, apps available on the site grew 30 percent in 2014, according to calculations made earlier this year by Talking Digital media.