Android Phone Tips
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| Android Phone Tips |
The Guardian's app has landed on Android phones, delivering left-leaning news, opinion, photos and video right to your blower. We doubt he'll be downloading the app, but you can get it now from the Android Market.
I am very excited to announce that the Guardianapp for Android is now available. The app - which is free to download and is available from the Android Market worldwide - includes the latest news, sport, comment, reviews, videos, podcasts and picture galleries from guardian.co.uk.
If you want in depth coverage of a particular story, you can add that topic to your homescreen - UK riots or phone hacking, for instance. The app was designed and developed by an in-house team - headed by lead Android developer Rupert Bates - using the Guardian's Content API. The iPhone app also goes from strength to strength with a total of 480,914 downloads since its launch in January 2011.
That means The Guardian believes it can charge high-end British iPhone users but not mass-market Android owners (or overseas iPhone users, who are also not subject to the fees). “We feel that having a free, ad-funded Android app is the right business model for this marketplace and platform at this point in time,” a Guardian News & Media spokesperson tells paidContent. The Guardian allows developers to re-publish its content for free through its API (though the process of monetising that content has barely begun), and several Android apps already offer Guardian articles for free.
The split mobile business model is more than just a bifurcated app strategy. In promotion, The Guardian also promotes its free mobile website harder than its subscription iPhone mobile app. This summer, the mobile website comprised a tenth of Guardian.co.uk’s total traffic.
The message is clear - if you want free Guardian, use the desktop or mobile website or Android; if you want to pay what is the equivalent of four daily print copies for an entire year’s mobile app access, use the iPhone app.
- After revising its iPhone app on a subscription model in January, by June, 67,258 people had subscribed to the app (in the UK, 72 percent of them for one year at £3.99, 28 percent for six months at £2.99). That suggests it made £193,218 from annual subs and £56,308 from six-month subs in the first half of the year, for a total £249,526 before Apple’s commission.
- The milestone coincided with the first of the six-month subscribers being required to renew. But The Guardian won’t disclose how many people have done so.
- It also coincided with Apple’s new policy of requiring subscription payments go through iTunes Store with 30 percent commission. “Our iPhone subscriptions have always run through iTunes, so there is no change in terms of the 30 percent issue,” a spokesperson says.
- The iPhone app has been downloaded 52,915 times in the States, where it is free because The Guardian wants to build an audience there.
By. Android Phone Tips
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