THE CHANNEL
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ISSUE 2 2013
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57
clippings or headlines. So from Al
Jazeera through to Joe Bloggʹs blog,
itʹs a consistent user experience
across the portfolio.
It's a free app?
Essentially the user downloads the
app for free, thereʹs advertising
placed in and around the content
and the menu pages in the
application. Each of our partners
receives a pro‐rata share of the
revenues generated from the
advertising. When we started this
service we wanted the advertising
to be contextual, i.e. related to the
content thatʹs on the page.
Unfortunately that is still a little bit
ahead of the curve on mobile, so we
tend to see more display
campaigns, cost‐per‐click
campaigns going on at the moment.
You have to work hard to maximise
the advertising revenue from
mobile today, itʹs a very new
market.
What's the background to the
partnership with HTC?
HTC wanted to differentiate
themselves when they released
their HTC One device earlier in the
year, not in a tech kind of way but
through content. So they came up
with this idea thatʹs now called
BlinkFeed™, which places full‐text
news content right onto the
homescreen of the phone. As part
“
”
2016 is like
millions of
years away
in the
mobile
industry
of the set‐up process when you
switch your HTC One on for the
first time you are asked questions
about what sort of content you like,
and then you get this elegantly
presented information feed with
news from the content providers
and the topics that you are
interested in. And thatʹs all fed out
from our platform ‐ thatʹs a huge
partnership for us. The phone is
being sold in over 50 markets – we
have 50 different editions in 15
languages now! Itʹs a very exciting
project for us and we think a very
cool initiative by a manufacturer
who is doing something a bit
different.
Which markets are still to conquer?
For our own applications such as
News Republic, China is next on
the list, and then maybe to
springboard into other Asian
markets as our platform can now
support Asian languages. We are
also looking closely at Russia,
India, Brazil and the Arabic
language markets.
For many users in emerging
markets applications such as ours
are a way of connecting to the
world. A recent Ovum report says
that even less affluent users in
emerging markets can justify the
purchase of an application if it is a
key source of information or
entertainment. I would agree with
that. We have a tech news
application called Appy Geek
which is almost as popular as our
flagship product News Republic.
Itʹs extremely popular in India but
also in Mexico, that was a surprise
to us.
And of course the US market is
very important. As a European
company we have been less
successful so far at promoting
ourselves on the other side of the
Atlantic. You need to build strong
brand presence in that market,
which is a challenge. However we
were surprised to get some
statistics recently from comScore
that show in terms of usage we are
actually in the top three
applications of this type in the US,
comparing well with leaders
Flipboard and Pulse.
What will you do for the next
Olympics?
2016 is like millions of years away
in the mobile industry! We ran
special editions for the 2012
Olympics and we would start
looking to do a special edition or
something similar early in 2015. We
are obviously keen to work with
any sports news provider that
would be interested in joining us.
What's next?
MWC this year showed that there
are a number of operating system
providers waiting in the wings who
want to get in on the act and
manufacturers have started to look
at them quite seriously as a way to
differentiate themselves from what
has essentially become a two horse
race between Apple and Google.
Then thereʹs the convergence of
devices – people will say ʹWell, I
don’t need all these different
screens – phone, tablet, etc. What I
need is something in the middle
that does everything for me.ʹ Also
there is the emergence of
“wearables” – Google Glass is
perhaps the most high‐profile
example of what could be a whole
new class of “smart” devices.
David Finch, thank you.
www.mobilesrepublic.com
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