Apple’s tablet has gotten the best of Time’s CEO, Ann Moore, who expects everyone to grab one sooner or later

Jun 3, 2010 07:19 GMT  ·  By

Time Inc.’s CEO, Ann Moore, has expressed sheer enthusiasm towards the new Apple iPad during Time Warner’s “Investor Day” last week. According to a report by Forbes, Moore filled attendees in on the division’s recent performance, reporting some $50 million in operating income during the first quarter of 2010. During the same period last year, Time had lost $32 million. Moore reportedly spoke in effusiveness about paid content provided through mobile and portable devices, such as the iPad.

The company already has the Time and Entertainment Weekly apps, yet Moore said it was gearing up to launch several more from its other magazine brands. There will be a People app, as well as food, beauty and cleaning apps for Real Simple. A sampling of soundbites from Moore’s presentation Q+A session is provided.

Moore reportedly told attendees, “At my lunch table today, I was shocked that not one of you had an iPad.” On a more serious note, “We see the next flood of new portable color touchscreens headed to market in the next 18 months as a game changer,” she said, according to Forbes. “It will be the opportunity that content producers like Time Inc. have been waiting for to reestablish value for quality digital content. It’s argued that it will be impossible to get consumers to pay for digital content since they’ve grown up getting everything for free. We disagree.”

Moore shared her belief that tablet computers were now bringing back something that had been lost when the Web took off. “Our readers can once again literally touch our content while still having that familiar ‘lean back’ experience of a magazine,” Moore said. “In real time, they can link in instead of linking out to the rest of the story on Time.com.”

She also touted tablets as great platforms to advertise on, saying that customers could evaluate products much better, “And when you’ve made your decision it can help to find you a place to buy them,” her exact words were.

“As more and more hardware manufacturers come in with these e-readers there is just huge demand for our product, for our video product, for my print product—it’ll all be combined,” Moore asserted. “We think very healthy business models will be coming out of it. We’ll be making more money in those businesses than we’ve been making with our traditional dot-coms.” Moore concluded by saying that, “People are paying. We know people will pay for it … it’s a business model that is just really very delicious.”