Sports Illustrated will start selling digital subscriptions tomorrow afternoon on smartphones and tablets that run on Google’s Android mobile operating system.
It marks the first Time Inc. title to have a digital subscription version and is likely to put some pressure on Apple to come to terms with publishers for its iPad apps.
The move comes just in time to make SI’s best-selling swimsuit issue available as the first digital subscription edition.
The decision is only one day after Time Inc. said it would partner with Hewlett-Packard to make digital subscriptions available on HP’s new TouchPad tablet that will hit the market this summer.
Initially, SI thought it had worked out an arrangement to make digital subscriptions available via the iPad in June, but Apple vetoed the deal at the 11th hour.
Apple has been selling single issues of magazines in the $4.99 range but no long-term subscriptions since it launched the iPad last year.
So far, one of the only publications to have a digital subscription available via Apple iPad is The Daily, the first iPad-only publication that was unveiled by News Corp. on Feb. 2 with an annual subscription price of $39.99 a year and a weekly price of 99 cents. (News Corp. also owns The Post.)
Eddie Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet services, said at the launch that he expected to make an announcement about a deal to allow publishers of news weeklies to sell subscriptions shortly.
Time Inc. is expected to reveal its pricing arrangement on the Android system at an event tomorrow with Time Inc.’s Chief Digital Officer, Randall Rothenberg, Sports Illustrated Group Editor Terry McDonell and SI President Mark Ford.