Category Archives: Mobile

FT sees 150,000 uses of new web-app in first 10 days

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The Financial Times’ new web-based app has been viewed 150,000 times since its launch 10 days ago, which includes 100,000 hits in the first week of launch, the FT said in a media release today.

The FT is the first major news publisher to launch this type of HTML5 hybrid app, which can be viewed across a number of different smartphone and tablet devices.

Steve Pinches, FT group product head, said the app has received very positive feedback.

“Comments include recognition of the technical capabilities of the app and being at the cutting edge of technology. Users have also expressed appreciation for the improved speed of the app and look and feel enhancements when using on the iPhone.”

He explained where the app is heading.

“We will take a two-fold approach to improvements to the app. Firstly we will focus on adding new content to the existing app, including special reports, newspaper graphics and the ability to save articles for later. Secondly we will develop the app for other devices including Honeycomb, Samsung and BlackBerry Playbook.

“Our next priority is releasing the app for Android devices, both large and small screen. Following that we will work on an FT web app for BlackBerry Playbook.”

Initial analysis shows the ‘Companies’ section of the web-app is the most popular, followed by the Life and Arts section, which makes up around 10 per cent of consumption overall. Other popular features include Markets Data, World, Markets and Lex.

“Interestingly, we are seeing much more leisure-type usage, with user peaks early morning, evening and around lunch time. This suggests that as well as a core tool for use during the business day, like FT.com on a desktop, the app is an accessory being used on the way to and from work and planning for the day ahead.”

#mobilemedia11: ‘Tablets are biggest opportunity for publishers’, says Bonnier

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Tablets pose the biggest opportunity publishers have had for a long time and offer new possibilities for making money, according to Staffan Ekholm from Bonnier’s Moving Media+.

Speaking at today’s Mobile Media Strategies event Ekholm said tablet apps are now in a “crawling” developmental stage, and likened their position to where the web was in 1996 and 1997.

“Tablets are not just another device and channel,” he told publishers at the event, “you have to recreate the experience, packaging and marketing.”

He said the best people to drive the creation of tablet magazines and apps are the creatives, but with editors having total control in the content.

“If you are starting from scratch with a tablet app, think freely,” he said, but warned moving from print can be more problematic.

He encouraged publishes to be aware of the possibilities for engaging advertising, including using HTML5.

And the future of magazine tablet publishing? “It is all about products,” he said.

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

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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

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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.

#mobilemedia11: A Storify of the event

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TheMediaBriefing’s latest conference Mobile Media Strategies kicked off this morning. Our technology correspondent Sarah Marshall is reporting from the event on Journalism.co.uk and via Twitter @journalism_live.

You can also fill up on the day’s events so far with the Storify below which curates content from the morning panels and discussions.

#mobilemedia11: Ten facts on mobile media – phones and tablets

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Publishers are embracing mobile technology to find new ways to enter the ever-expanding market. Speaking at today’s Mobile Media Strategies event in London, Ronan de Renesse, senior analyst at Screen Digest, listed 10 facts on what mobile means for publishers.

1. The smartphone market is only 25 per cent of the mobile market in the UK.

2. The UK is Europe’s leading market for smartphones.

3. There are 18 million smartphones in the UK. By 2015 there will be 42.9 million.

4. In 2015 there will be more Android smartphones in Europe than the total number of smartphones on the continent today.

5. Apple has a 82.5 per cent market share of apps.

6. Android’s Market will take a increased market share

7. Games account for around 50 per cent of apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store.

8. Rich media, which includes content and data revenues, account for just 2 per cent of total revenue. “But it doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. Rich media is very important for the future,” says de Renesse.

9. The introduction of tablets has affected the price of apps. The average price of a tablet app is almost double the price of a phone app therefore the average spend by the user is greater.

10. The future for publishers could lie in small, in app transactions.

Guardian reveals iPhone app figures with more than 400,000 downloads

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The Guardian today revealed figures for its iPhone app for the first time since its launch in January this year – showing a download total of more than 400,000 times globally.

According to figures from the Guardian a total of 67,258 users have gone on to subscribe to the app, which is available to download for free, but requires subscription for further reading of content. The cost of subscription is £2.99 for six months or £3.99 a year.

In the US – where the Guardian is due to launch its new digital operation later this year and there is no subscription charge for the app – it has been downloaded 36,089 times.

Today’s figures are also said to show that traffic to Guardian.co.uk via its mobile site has more than doubled on the same time last year, from 4.5 per cent to more than 10 per cent.

Google News mobile launches ‘News near you’ location service

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Late on Friday Google announced the launch of ‘News near you’ for Google News on mobile, offering location-based news in its US English edition.

Location-based news first became available in Google News in 2008, and today there’s a local section for just about any city, state or country in the world with coverage from thousands of sources. We do local news a bit differently, analyzing every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.

See more on this here…

Reuters: Yudu launches service to help publishers evade Apple subscription cut

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Reuters reported this week that digital publishing company Yudu has launched a service which means magazine publishers can evade the 30 per cent cut which Apple takes when subscriptions are charged through the App Store.

Yudu, whose online publishing tools help companies tailor their content for tablet computers, smartphones and ereaders such as the Amazon Kindle, said Apple had recognized its new service as compliant with its terms and conditions.

… The new dual-subscriptions system from Yudu, whose customers include Reader’s Digest and Haymarket, allows users to download publications onto their Apple device through the App Store, even when the purchase is made directly from the publisher.

Read the full story here…

Yesterday the Telegraph announced the launch of a new iPad app which appeared to follow Apple’s new rules, which state that while publishers are allowed to make a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer must also be made available inside the app, through which Apple will take a 30 per cent cut.

New tool provides optional upload of iPhone location data

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The Research and Development Group at the New York Times Company has released a tool to allow iPhone users to upload their location data. The information – which is anonymous – will then be available to groups who apply to access the data.

Explanations here and here on the openpaths.cc website state:

This data represents a unique opportunity to help solve some of the world’s toughest problems. We believe you should have the option of donating your data in an open, secure fashion, while maintaining control of your information and where it goes.

Research requests are received from any and all projects – public, private, commercial, academic, artistic, or governmental. Requests typically look at specific geographical areas or demographic information about their subjects, so research requests include these criteria. Based on this information, users receive monthly updates that list the projects where their data is a good fit, and are offered the opportunity to donate their data.

In return, we ask researchers to provide a small benefit to their data donors. This might be a custom visualization of a donor’s location information, access to the results of the research, or other related benefits.

When researchers revealed that iPhones had been recording location data, concerns were raised about privacy.

As explained in this article in the Guardian:

Security researchers discovered that Apple‘s iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner’s computer when the two are synchronised.

The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone’s recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner’s movements using a simple program.

For some phones, there could be almost a year’s worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple’s iOS 4 update to the phone’s operating system, released in June 2010.

Apple has now released a software update 4.3.3 to fix this. Anyone who wants to make their data available should hold off installing it.