Apple’s iPad has created a new appetite among readers for fresh news content in the evening, according to AFP’s head of editorial research and development.

Speaking at the WAN-IFRA summer university in Paris, Denis Teyssou quoted research from comScore which found the iPad was changing the game regarding news consumption towards the end of the day.

While computers are the dominant device for news during the working day, and smartphone use is relatively constant throughout the day, tablets overtook both of them to become the number one device in the evening.

However, Teyssou said some existing news products tailored for the iPad – notably Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily – did not necessarily cater for this evening boost in audience.

Teyssou is the head of editorial for AFP’s research and development division, Medialab, which is responsible for developing iPhone and iPad apps, user-generated content, data tools and mash-ups.

He presented an overview of how the tablet publishing market is developing, one year after Apple launched its iPad.

Before the launch, analysts were cautious about how many units would ship. ABI Research had estimated four million sales in 2010. The actual figure was four times the size.

The figure is now expected to grow rapidly in the next few years. Infinite Research expects that 147.2 million tablet computers will ship in 2015.

Analysis from Gartner, also for 2015, estimates Apple will have achieved total cumulative tablet sales of 138 million worldwide by then. Another 113 million tablets will have shipped that use Android as the operating system.

Out of the apps in Apple’s iPad Hall of Fame, news apps are the second biggest category, behind games. Traditional players dominate, with CNN, NPR and the Wall Street Journal occupying the top three positions.

However, the next four positions are occupied by newcomers:  content aggregator Flipboard, customisable news reader Pulse, Instapaper, and RSS app Reeder for iPad.

Other news apps that Teyssou thinks will grow in popularity include personalised magazine Zite, News.me and news aggregator Ongo.

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