Popular Science reports a spike after Apple Newsstand's launch

Here is your daily Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock news and rumors for Friday.

Apple Newsstand Is a Boon for Popular Science: It’s been difficult to judge whether tablets and e-readers will be the savior of print periodicals. Will people really be willing to drop a few bucks on electronic magazines when a Web browser is sitting right there on the iPad?

Here’s a hopeful sign: Bonnier’s Popular Science magazine released digital readership numbers, and the spike following the opening of Apple’s Newsstand digital storefront in October is significant to say the least. Bonnier’s tablet software publishing Mag+ (via All Things Digital) said in a new report that the tablet edition of Popular Science saw one-week sales increase 13% immediately following Newsstand’s opening.

Better news still is that weekly sales, which have been steadily rising since February 2011, increased at a greater rate, thanks to Newsstand. These are just Popular Science‘s numbers though, and the weekly readership is hitting above just 40,000 at this point. Print circulation is still above 1.3 million for the magazine so digital editions have a long way to go.

Apple Reveals International Availability of iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud: Since opening its cloud services for business earlier this fall, there’s been no small amount of confusion on where Apple’s iTunes Match service is available and where it’s yet to launch. Apple posted an official statement on its website on Thursday to clarify. It said its cloud-based iTunes service iTunes Match is now available in 17 countries, and iTunes in the Cloud is available in 120 countries, but only the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. support all media (TV, film, books) and not just digital music.

Apple Website Among the Most Trafficked: A new Com! Score re port released Thursday said Apple’s website is the 13th most-trafficked U.S. website, and one of only three retailers in the top 15. The company’s 79 million unique visitors placed it well ahead of Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), which came in at 18th. iTunes and its numerous sub-businesses, like the App Store and iBookstore, provide the bulk of Apple’s retail traffic rather than the company’s online store for products. The two retailers ahead of Apple are eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).

As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at?@ajohnagnello?and?become a fan of?InvestorPlace on Facebook.