The first BBC iPhone apps will be launched in April, the company announced this week.
BBC News app is first one on the launch list, followed by BBC Sport app in June – just in time for the Football World Cup. A dedicated app for the iPlayer is also in plans.
First made available to iPhone, the apps will shortly after be compatible with BlackBerry and Google’s Android based devices.
Paolo Pescatore, the director of applications and services at CCS Insight, said in The Independent that the iPhone represents a platform that everyone needs to get on.
He said: “This was a missing piece of the jigsaw for the BBC’s digital strategy and this is likely to be the start of many apps to come.”
The move, which was announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, has caused anxiousness among newspaper publishers.
Worried that free BBC apps will undermine commercial publishers in this new, but potentially lucrative market, the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) has insisted the move to be subject to a Public Value Test as it’s said to be an entirely new service rather than an extension to an existing service.
David Newell, NPA director, said: “Not for the first time, the BBC is preparing to muscle into a nascent market and trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers. We strongly urge the BBC Trust to block these damaging plans,”
Sources: The Independent, MediaWeek
Posted in News Roundup