Evening Standard to launch mobile app, may charge for print again

Posted by Savita Sauvin on February 15, 2010 at 5:26 PM

The London Evening Standard will launch a mobile application later this month, aiming to connect its content with social media, Media Guardian reported today. The newspaper's print version is also now being sold again, after dropping its cover price in October.

The new mobile app will be available later this month across all major smartphone platforms, according to a press release from Handmark, the company that built the app. However, no detail was provided as to whether the app will be paid, or supported by advertising. It will deliver the newspaper in a simple, easy-to-navigate format and the "content within the mobile application will be refreshed automatically and available for offline reading."

"Our goal is to deliver our readers a quality extension to their reading experience when they don't have immediate access to the paper or the London Evening Standard Web site," Tim Smith, general manager of digital at the Evening Standard, stated in the press release.

Handmark's mobile publishing platform has already been used by Thomson Reuters, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, according to Journalism.co.uk.

The mobile application will facilitate integration of social networking tools and thereby allow users to share articles via Facebook, Twitter, and del.icio.us, which seems to be a clever move, with Facebook leading the mobile revolution in the United Kingdom, according to Media Guardian. A customisable "My Feeds" tab will enable users to access their own preferred news and feature stories.

In print, the Evening Standard is also trialling charging north-west London and customers in suburban areas, where the daily is difficult to distribute. The pricing charged to customers is completely at the discretion of the news agent, with some selling for 20p and others at the old price of 50p, Media Guardian reported. The Evening Standard was made free in October, after being a paid title for 180 years.

"It is such a strong brand and people are prepared to pay for it here. They are not buying the local newspaper or any other newspaper instead. They are in the habit of reading the Evening Standard,"

The distribution patterns of Standard are under observation by its owner, Alexander Lebedev, who is currently involved in negotiations to buy the Independent, according to a statement. Lebedev, a Russian billionaire who also owns Novaya Gazeta, bought a controlling stake in the Evening Standard in January 2009.