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The advent of the Internet sent the world of print publications and display advertising in a death spiral that’s lasted more than 10 years now. BusinessWeek is a great case study. Back in 2000, the 80-year old BusinessWeek magazine was valued at almost a billion dollars. Less than 10 years later, decimated by shrinking readership and display ad revenue, it was sold to Bloomberg LP for a rumored $2 million dollars.

What did publishing in? Three things: Rising materials and postage and complex distribution channels increased expenses. The rise of search engine marketing (SEM)/pay-per-click and the advent of social media led to a steep decline in display ad revenue. And readers everywhere flocked to the free, immediate content available on the Web.

But help might be on the way from a most unlikely source: Apple. The same company that revolutionized the music distribution business is looks ready to do the same with the way we gather and interact with published information. There’s a good chance this revolution will begin before school lets out for the summer.

The heart of the revolution is the rumored iTablet or iSlate device that the Wall Street Journal announced will launch in January 2010 and ship by March. Although nobody has said anything official about the device, it has been mentioned by The New York Times in passing, and Sports Illustrated has actually posted an impressive demonstration of what their magazine *might* look like — on a device that has yet to be officially announced.

Why will the equivalent of a giant-sized iPhone be the salvation for the print industry? A few reasons:

• It’ll do for publishing’s distribution model what iTunes did for music. The old model of write/layout/print/deliver/consume will be replaced by write/layout/consume. Much faster and cheaper.
• It’ll bring back display advertising dollars. Today, print content is posted and reflowed to the Web, and a full-page display ad is replaced by a bunch of banner and tile ads. Not remotely the same user experience. By keeping print content in its native format as the iTablet allegedly will, the display ad again becomes a valuable piece of the marketer’s arsenal.
• It drops the barrier between offline and online content. If you looked at a magazine today and wanted to follow the call to action, you’d have to set aside the magazine or paper, open a browser, type in an arcane URL and hope you got it right. The iTablet experience removes the wall between print and online with the click of a mouse, engaging social media, online video, Flash animations, and more.
• It allows the user to keep content – and search it easily – forever. The beauty of the Web is that all content is linked together and searchable, making it unnecessary to hang onto old media. The same will now apply with content on the iTablet.

But Apple isn’t the only one looking to lead the revolution. Microsoft is preparing a device of its own called Courier, along with another impressive-yet-unofficial tech demo. Courier’s hinged cover actually mimics the act of holding a magazine better than a flat surface can. Whether the software is elegant and intuitive enough to meet the promises of the demo will probably mean the difference between a true revolutionary device and an evolution of the tablet PCs on the market today.

Most corporate communicators have already migrated their in-house magazines to either enewsletter or imagazine platforms in the last few years in an effort to save costs. But corporate marketers and communicators who haven’t built the iTablet or Courier into their plans for this year will be missing out on one of the biggest revolutions – and product launches – since the rise of the Internet. Bernstein Research is projecting that 3-5 million tablets will be sold in 2010 alone… will your communications plan be ready?