AP Mobile Launches on Windows Mobile Platform

There are an estimated 30+ million Windows Mobile phones out there. That spells reach for AP Mobile, says Jeff Litvack, AP’s general manager of mobile and emerging products. Litvack, who reports that the existing AP mobile app, with more than 1.5 million registered mobile users, is “the top news app and the No. 4 most popular app in Windows Marketplace for Mobile.” Developed by Associated Press, AP Mobile launched in May 2008 ap_mobile_news (covered in MobilizedTV) as a mobile WAP site. The AP Mobile application is available on the iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, Nokia devices and Android.

“We’re certainly proud of our success and are continuing to grow,” says Litvack, who promised “many things coming down the pike in terms of new products for 2010.” “It’s not a dull time to be in mobile,” he adds.

Litvack spoke about some major changes up ahead for how mobile apps will be monetized via mobile advertising. “Our feeling is that in 2010 you’ll see much more rich media advertising,” he predicts. “We will definitely be working less with ad networks. The major shift is happening in the industry as a whole, as premium publishers take more responsibility for their inventory. In the past, we allowed ad networks to run ads on the home page and anywhere else on the site. You’ll now see placement become more restricted as our ad teams sell against inventory on a cross-platform basis.”

Litvack also reveals that AP Mobile users, regardless of operating system, will see new features in 2010. “We have a fairly robust feature set we’re looking to implement across all of AP Mobile news apps,” he says. “Our goal is to add more content as well as features and functions.” The strategy is to provide international, national and hyper-local content, allowing each user to personalize the experience to his or her specific needs. AP Mobile recently expanded into Latin America and, now, Puerto Rico with this strategy. “We’ll also be expanding more internationally into Europe and Asia, adding local content from those locations,” Litvack says.

The ad-supported app is still free but ad sales are not yet booming, admits Litvack. “From an advertising perspective, it’s still a nascent industry,” he says. “We’re growing [the number of downloads] every month substantially and we think we’ll get more with Windows Mobile. With that, we’re getting to the point of where our reach is large enough to make an ad-supported model work.” Litvack notes that Associated Press also released a paid iPhone app: a mobile version of the AP Style book, considered by many to be a bible for journalists. Priced just under $30, this app had a positive ROI within a month. “The AP Mobile team is looking to support premium apps and ad-supported apps,” he says. “It is important for us to master mobile by experimenting with advertising and content offerings across emerging platforms, especially as we lead the charge for participating AP member news organizations that provide local content to our network. There are lots of opportunities and no one model that will win.”

From the Microsoft point of view, the AP news app is a welcomed addition to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. “AP’s global network of fast and trusted news is in an easy-to-use mobile application,” said Jason Lim, director of ISV and developer experience at Microsoft. “The AP news app makes it easy for our customers to get the latest news, keep up with the stock market, stay on top of local news and weather, catch up-to-minute sports coverage, or check out restaurant and entertainment reviews when making plans to go out.”

Using the Windows Mobile platform, AP Mobile worked with Microsoft Corp. to deliver a robust selection of AP and local news headlines across over 50 channels, including Top News, Business, Politics, World, College Sports, Olympics, Entertainment Reviews, Celebrity, Travel, Lifestyle and Wacky.

Industry research firm eMarketer estimates that 49.4 percent of mobile phone users will be accessing the Internet from mobile devices at least monthly through either traditional browsers or installed applications by 2013.

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