iPad Subscriptions Made Easy by Freshly Funded Startup

Can the iPad save the magazine star? It might, if Portland, Oregon startup Urban Airship has anything to say about it.

For all their dreams of success in a medium that privileges big pictures, multi-media and a touch interface, publishers of periodical content have been frustrated by the lack of subscription sales options on Apple’s iPad.

Urban Airship is a small startup that has begun to power iPad subscription to content for publishers including NewsWeek, the Atlantic and the National Basketball Association. The company has raised a second round of venture capital, $5.4 million from the Foundry Group, True Ventures and the Founders Co-op.

With Urban Airship’s new subscription feature, you buy a subscription for a specific amount of time, then you get all the updates during that period. They also use a unique identifier so you keep your subscription even if you change devices (within iOS). That can be both new content downloads or simply unlocking gated content.

Does your company have content that would benefit from Urban Airship’s subscription feature?

Full story at ReadWriteWeb »