A Chinese girl tries out an Apple iPad on Friday at an Apple store during the launch of the device in Beijing.

Apple is developing a digital newsstand for publishers that would let them sell magazines and newspapers to consumers for use on Apple devices, said two sources familiar with the matter.

The newsstand, designed particularly for the iPad, would be similar to Apple’s iBook store for electronic books, said the sources, who declined to be identified because the negotiations are private. The newsstand would be separate from Apple’s App Store, where people can buy some publications now, they said.

Apple’s effort is aimed at luring more consumers to the iPad and helping publishers sell subscriptions, rather than single issues. The main hang-ups between Apple and publishers including Time Warner, Conde Nast, Hearst Corp. and News Corp. are who controls data about users and how to split subscription revenue, the sources said. Pricing for subscriptions also hasn’t been worked out.

The new storefront could be up and running within a couple of months, although the talks are ongoing and could fall apart. Apple may wait to unveil the initiative until they are ready to announce the next iPad, possibly in early 2011, one person said.

“These are serious discussions about subscriptions and advertising within newspaper and magazine applications,” said Roger Fidler, the program director for digital publishing at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. “Publishers want to know who their customers are and their usage patterns while reading.”

Other notable business news:

Consumer confidence unexpectedly dropped to a one-year low in September, indicating the biggest part of the economy is being handcuffed by a struggling labor market. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment fell to 66.6 from 68.9 in August, the group said Friday. This month’s reading was less than the most pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.

• Stocks end with meager gains, keeping rally going. Stocks gave up most of their gains to end slightly higher Friday, extending a September rally that has slowed as the month wore on. The Dow Jones industrial tacked on 13 points, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index edged up less than a point. Both traded close to the break-even level all day. The Dow and other major indexes logged their third-straight weekly advance.