Tag Archives: iPad app

#mobilemedia11: Over 55s with iPads are ‘sweet spot’ for Telegraph

The number of subscribers who pay to use the Telegraph’s iPad app are “hugely encouraging”, said Tim Rowell, director of mobile development at the Telegraph Media Group.

The app has received a boost as there are more over 55s with iPads than under 35s, Rowell explained, “which is a sweet spot for us as they are our readers”.

Research shows the average age of the Telegraph iPad reader is 47, about half way between average age of print and web reader.

Speaking at the Media Briefing’s Mobile Media Strategies event today, Rowell refused to go further and reveal how many people had signed up since the launch of the subscriber app on 5 May.

The Telegraph’s paid for app launched just over a month ago with readers paying £1.19 a day (which is 19 pence more than the print edition due to the limited rates set by Apple) or £9.99 a month. The Telegraph’s 340,000 print subscribers are able to access the content via the app without paying extra.

The fact readers are willing to pay is “incredibly reassuring”, Rowell explained, as feedback before the launch of the subscriber app suggested the reverse.

The research was carried out by “rushing out” a free iPad app and gathering audience data. Approximately 60,000 people agreed to have their browsing information analysed. The inclusion of web trends showed what people were reading, when and whether they were using 3G or a wifi network.

The free app research showed weekend reading was twice as popular as week-day reading on the app, with two daily peaks, at 7am and 9pm. As the app was updated just once a day readers were accessing content that was almost 12 hours old. “But that was not important”, Rowell said.

In edition to wider audience data, around 1,800 people submitted a feedback form to give the Telegraph an even more detailed picture of what readers wanted, which included the crossword.

The biggest surprise in the research findings was the worldwide spread of iPad Telegraph readers, Rowell said.

Another key lesson is that the app is “not a substitution for print”, Rowell said, and it requires spend. The annual running costs of an app are around six times the cost of building the iPad app.

#mobilemedia11: FT web-based iPad and iPhone app a ‘wake-up call’ to publishers

The release of the Financial Times’ web-based HTML5  app has provided “a big wake up call” to publishers , said Andrew Grill, keynote speaker at the today’s Mobile Media Strategies day.

Earlier this month the FT released an HTML5-based iPad and iPhone app which circumvents the 30 per cent charges levied on app sales by Apple by allowing users to update content through the FT website and thus allowing the newspaper to take the full revenue.

The Economist is “watching closely” and Tom Standage, digital editor of the title, signalled it may follow suit.

“HTML5 will be the answer to all of our problems; even if it’s not yet,” predicted Ilicco Elia, a mobile product expert, who until yesterday worked for Reuters and is yet to announce where he will be working next.

Elia warned that “you can’t do everything in HTML5” and said it was a sensible option for the FT to launch in HTML5 compared with an unknown title. “It’s okay of you’re the FT because people know the brand in will go in search of it,” he explained.

Many publishers are now looking at the HTML5 hybrid: not a pure app, not a pure browser experience, said John Barnes, managing director digital strategy and development at Incisive Media, which works with B2B publishers. He explained the dilemma between developing apps when working with very different titles.

Barnes gave the example of two titles he works with: Legal Week, where 10.5 per cent of web visits are mobile, most of them accessing the site via a BlackBerry device. He urged the audience to compare this with Photography magazine which is mostly read on the iPad and iPhone.

During a session on how to make money with mobile media, Paul Lynette, head of mobile advertising at EMEA, Microsoft Advertising, showed the potential for in app ads using HTML5.

Thinking of developing an app, an mobile site or a HTML5 hybrid?

Considering the advantages of mobile editions (m.editions) versus apps versus the HTML5 hybrid, Barnes said the advantage of m.editions is they are browser-based and, therefore, provide full integration with a CMS, have the same domain name, integration with analytics and web trends.

And for news sites without an m.edition Elia gave a word of warning to the delegates of the event: “You should not be here if you don’t have an m.edition, you should be in the office coding.”

He warned there is “not a lot of margin in mobile” but it should be central to any online strategy.

Elia warned of the importance of listening to your audience. “You don’t have to be first when it comes to apps,” he said and suggesting it was better to spend more time developing a better app.

Barnes had a different suggestion to those thinking of creating an app: “Write the press release on the launch of an app before you build it. You’ll often realise it’s a crapp (crap app),” he said.

Washington Post launches iPad app

The Washington Post announced the launch of its new iPad app last night, which is now available from the iTunes App Store.

In a press release, the Post said the app will combine “trusted reporting and analysis with innovative social media and sharing capabilities and award-winning multimedia”.

Users who subscribe to the app will receive free access until mid-February next year, when print newspaper subscribers will be charged 99 cents a month and non-subscribers $3.99 a month.

Features on the app include a ‘Live Topics’ component which brings together news, commentary, aggregated social media comments, multimedia and photos on the top stories of the day.

Financial Times launches iPad app for Chinese edition

The Financial Times has launched its FTChinese.com app for iPad.

The  app is compatible with both the wi-fi and 3G iPad models and allows readers to download content to browse offline. It is sponsored by watchmaker Rolex.

The launch follows the FT’s highly successful iPad app, launched in May, which has attracted around 400,000 downloads and generated more than £1 million in advertising revenue. According to global commercial director Ben Hughes, the iPad now accounts for 10 per cent of the paper’s new digital subscriptions.

Oliver Zhang, senior product manager at FTChinese.com said: “The iPad is another exciting platform providing readers with FTChinese.com’s high quality content. Our objective is to allow users to read award-winning content on the move as well as  interact further with the website’s dynamic features such as slide shows, videos and interactive quizzes.”

Cooliris brings Wikipedia to the iPad with new magazine-style layout

Wikipedia will soon be available on the iPad with the launch of new app, ‘Discover’, according to a report by cnet.com.

Discover is the first app from software company Cooliris, which already produces an iPhone app that enables its users to turn photo collections into “interactive 3D wall” art.

The new app uses content from Wikipedia and organises the data into sections which can be browsed in a magazine format instead of having to scroll down a long browser window.

The end result is a Wikipedia with larger text that can be read like an e-book and photos that can be thumbed through and scaled up to the iPad’s full resolution. The app also takes advantage of orientation to reposition, expand or consolidate the data it’s showing. Along the way, Cooliris serves up advertisements, which is where it can make some of its money given the app’s free price tag.

Discover has been submitted to the App Store and users are invited to sign up here to be notified of its availability.

Sydney Morning Herald tries to shore up print sales with iPad app

The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia has been criticised after an announcing that local users would have to subscribe to the print edition in order to access the Herald’s new iPad app.

The SmartEdition app is advertised by the paper as enabling users to “read the Herald exactly as it appears in print, but on digital devices”.

It’s ideal for when you are away from home and crave local news in the newspaper format, with the convenience of digital access.

The design has already frustrated some commentators, who have called the app a “glorifed PDF reader”. The payment method outlined by the Herald on iTunes only served to annoy some further. mUmBRELLA.com.au writes:

Australian users can subscribe to a 7-day free trial if you download before August 31, 2010 if you are not a Herald subscriber. To access THE SMH app after downloading, tap the subscribe button within the app and follow the prompts.

Readers that live outside Australia can access a 7-day, 52-week subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald SmartEdition for just AU$52 a year.

According to mUmbrella this means “if you’re in New South Wales or ACT, the only way you can get hold of the iPad app is to subscribe to the print edition”.

It’s about using the iPad app as a way of shoring up plummeting print circulations. This is all about Fairfax being able to present its iPad subscribers to the Audit Bureau of Circulations as full price print subscribers who happen to be getting a “complimentary” copy of the app.

Techdirt added to the criticisms, saying this revenue stream will prove to be a “short-sighted” move by the publishers.

It’s no secret that some publications view the iPad and paywalls as ways to slow down the rate at which people are ditching subscriptions to paper publications — but it seems particularly short-sighted to make that the only way to get access to the digital app.

See mUmbrella’s full post here…

World’s first social magazine launches on iPad

Flipboard, the world’s first personalised social magazine, has been launched on the iPad, offering its users a magazine packaged collection of the news, features, videos and images circulating within their social networks.

The app was masterminded by Mike McCue, former CEO of Tellme and Evan Doll, former senior iPhone engineer at Apple and is getting its first public demonstration later today.

Because Flipboard renders links and images right in the magazine, readers no longer have to scan long lists of posts and click on link after link – instead they instantly see all the stories, comments and images, making it faster and more entertaining to discover, view and share social content.

Flipboard also lets readers easily create sections around topics or people they care about. Choose from Flipboardʼs suggested sections on topics such as sports, news, tech and style, with content hand-curated from popular and interesting Twitter feeds. Or, create an entirely new section by searching by topic, person or Twitter list to make Flipboard even more personal.

See a demonstration video below, courtesy of Inside Flipboard:

See the site at this link…

Innovative Interactivity (II): Interactive iPad app lets you choose your own story

Tracey Boyer looks at Touching Stories, an application developed for the iPad by two US, interactive design studios, which has been used to create a series of documentary films.

In the free app, directors Sean Ehringer, Erich Joiner, Tom Routson, Geordie Stephens and Jason Zada shot four short interactive documentaries and combined them into one storytelling interface called Touching Stories. The end result? An exhilarating choose-your-own-adventure where “you will be able to peel back more layers of the story by how you interact.”

Full post on Innovative Interactivity at this link…

Video below courtesy of Vimeo:

Metro launches iPad app

National commuter favourite The Metro has launched an iPad app, offering readers bitesize news, sports and showbiz.

The newspaper already has an iPhone app available, launched earlier this year.

[advert]The Metro joins other national newspapers, including the Financial Times and Express Newspapers, who have launched iPad apps this year.

In a release, Metro says it was created “with a newspaper in mind, offering digital news in a paper-like experience”.

“It gives readers the chance to swipe between individual headlines and full stories with a single finger, whilst moving between the different sections, including News, Showbiz, Sport, Weird, Music, Film, TV and Tech, using a dual finger swipe,” they say.

The Metro worked with digital design agency Fjord and mobile agency Bluestar, to create the app.