On the same day BBC Worldwide announced that its global iPlayer app was booming in Australia, the BBC’s commercial arm has revealed that its News app has launched internationally for larger screen Android Tablets.
Last month we reported that the tablet-focused app had been launched in the UK, with the international version touted to follow suit shortly after.
The Android News app launched in May last year and has been downloaded more than three million times since. It has always been available on all Android phones and tablets running software versions 1.6 and above, but it didn’t support those with Android 3.0.
This latest incarnation of the app gives an optimised experience for larger tablets – devices running Honeycomb and above. Smaller 7.1-inch tablets will still receive the non-optimized smartphone app.
Growing numbers of people are accessing BBC News on mobiles and tablets. In an average week, the BBC News sites and apps are visited by around 9.7m users worldwide on mobile and tablet devices, representing about 26% of the total visits to BBC News sites.
“We’re committed to bringing the depth of BBC News’ journalism to users wherever and whenever they choose to consume it and we’re so pleased to be able to make content available on an even broader range of devices,” said James Montgomery, Controller of Digital and Technology, BBC Global News.
“We’re very proud that BBC.com is the number one international News site across Asia-Pacific and EMEA and the fastest growing online news provider in the US,” added Chris Davies, Acting MD for BBC.com. “We understand that our audiences wish to access relevant, local and international news on an array of devices and are delighted that this now extends to Android tablet users.”
➤ BBC News App [Android]
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