iPhone app to finally arrive within 'weeks'

Flipboard will begin carrying movies and TV shows in the near future, Reuters reports. The developer's CEO, Mike McCue, says that he will take on the project at the end of 2011. The executive is refusing to comment on which studios have been approached; it is also unclear how the content might be formatted, though by definition the change will suddenly put Flipboard into competition with other iPad video apps such as Netflix and Hulu.

McCue has also revealed that he eventually hopes to sell books through Flipboard, and that within a few weeks, the company will finally release a long-anticipated iPhone version of the app. To date Flipboard has been a flagship app for the iPad, regularly promoted by Apple, and downloaded over 3 million times. While initially focused on scraping personal feeds, the title has since gained more curated content, and also its first advertising.

The ads will give Flipboard some of its first stable revenue. McCue says in fact that the company could technically make an operating profit in 2012, but probably won't as it hopes to reinvest the cash. "We're trying to create the largest company possible," says Danny Rimer, a general partner with Index Ventures, one of Flipboard's financial backers. The move of advertising revenue online is "a very big opportunity," he suggests.

by MacNN Staff