News Publications Embracing Mobile

Newspapers and magazines have been called a “dying industry” for a while now. With advertising and subscription income not keeping up with the cost of writes, editors, printers and distributors it’s hard for paper publications to stay in the black. The idea that online publication and the rise of e-readers and tablets will save the industry (albeit, in a new form) has also been kicking around for awhile. While there’s still a long way to go before the industry is “saved,” it does appear that most newspapers and magazines are giving mobile publications a shot.

According to a survey by the Alliance for Audited Media (which encompasses 210 publications), 90% of member publications have a Mobile Marketing presence. Here are a few takeaways, as reported by Paid Content:

• The most popular distribution platform is the iPad, which overtook the iPhone this year as the platform for which publishers are developing the most content.
• percent of publishers surveyed have iPad apps, 85 percent have iPhone apps and 75 percent have Android apps. But apps for Kindle and Nook are catching up: 67 percent of publishers have a Kindle app (up from 24 percent in 2011), and 57 percent have a Nook app (up from 14 percent in 2011).
• Publishers are by no means abandoning native apps for web apps. “We must do both now, although we still deliver a better experience with native,” one newspaper publisher said.
• For now, magazine publishers are choosing to stick with native apps, while newspaper publishers are undecided:

You can view the original article here.