Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Over the festive period, like thousands of other people I ventured to the cinema to see what all the fuss was about Avatar. The five minute trailer that was released on Xbox LIVE had whetted my appetite, but having to pay two euro more for the admission price and then discovering on my arrival that I also needed to fork out for 3D glasses, James Cameron’s latest offering wasn’t exactly putting me in a positive mood from the outset.

Then I saw the movie. Simply put, I was blown away. The storyline might not be Shakespearean, but Avatar is a visual feast. I struggled at times to figure out what was CGI and what wasn’t. It was amazing; Cameron singled handedly converted me to the magic of 3D movies, so much so that I was happy in retrospect to have paid the extra admission price.

It’s a major milestone for the movie industry, millions of cinemagoers will now be happy to queue up for the big screen, rather than download a pirate version because of the 3D experience.

Needless to say, other industries must be sitting up and taking note. None more so than the newspaper industry, particularly because of the launch of Apple’s tablet device and other similar gadgets from rival manufacturers.

Despite all the hype, a tablet device throws up some challenges to newspapers. For starters, the experience may cement the attitude in consumers’ minds that there is no difference between a newspaper and a website. Much like Avatar, the tablet device will need to offer users a new experience when reading a newspaper or magazine on it, if consumers are actually going to fork out a subscription fee.

Amazon reached a major milestone at Christmas, with sales of digital books outselling their physical counterparts (via Mashable.) It’s a pretty safe prediction to make that in the long term we will gradually see the printed newspaper disappear as consumers begin to adopt digital devices. As a result, newspapers and magazines will be competing with websites.

David Maybury points to an interesting video of some upcoming features for Penguin Books’s products on the iPad, which highlights the potential of the device and also illustrates the evolution of the printed book. I’ve embedded the video below.