Quark has announced that Quark App Studio will support iOS 5’s Newsstand feature.
Quark App Studio is a feature in the QuarkXPress DTP package that lets you created branded iPad apps. Earlier this month, Quark introduced version 9.1 of QuarkXPress, which brought the App Studio feature into the DTP tool for the first time.
iOS 5’s Newsstand is going to be a new way to discover and browse newspapers and magazines on an iOS devices.
Newsstand isn’t quite an app, as it actually behaves like an iOS folder. But unlike a standard iOS folder, Newsstand looks like a bookshelf, and it displays the covers for all your magazine and newspaper subscriptions. New issues of your iOS subscriptions will appear in Newsstand automatically and download in the background.
With QuarkXPress 9 and App Studio, magazine and newspaper publishers will be able to distribute and sell apps and issues through Newsstand, Quark said. App Studio users will be able to download new App Studio Factory app templates with Newsstand support soon after iOS 5 is made available.
“By making it simple for iPad users to purchase and interact with their magazine and newspaper subscriptions, Apple’s Newsstand will encourage the continued adoption of digital content,” said Dan Logan, QuarkXPress Senior Product Manager for Quark.
“With Quark App Studio we are not only helping designers rethink how readers consume content, but with affordable pricing we are able to offer publishers and organisations of all sizes the ability to make their digital publishing visions a reality. We’re seeing our newspaper and magazine publishers take the digital reading experience to the next level.”
Earlier this month, Adobe announced that its Digital Publishing Suite will support the Newsstand feature when iOS 5 is launched.
Digital Publishing Suite was launched in March 2011 and is pitched as a set of hosted software services and viewer technology to allow large publishers to create, distribute, monetise and analyse digital magazines, newspapers and publications.