BBC releases apps despite newspaper industry complaints

The BBC has decided to continue with its free news and sports mobile applications for Blackberry and Android phones, despite complaints from commercial news providers.

The BBC’s sports app was initially planned to be launched at the same time as the World Cup this year. However, the commercial media industry and the NPA (Newspaper Publishers Association) complained, resulting in a delay until the BBC conducted a review.

In February, when the original objections were made, NPA director David Newell, said: “Not for the first time, the BBC is preparing to muscle into a nascent market and trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers.”

However, last Friday the BBC Trust decided that mobile apps did not require a public value test. The BBC responded to the complaints by saying that there would be some overlap between BBC apps and free apps, but that the impact would not necessarily be that great, as BBC content was already available to mobile users’ web browsers anyway.

The NPA maintains their complaints regarding the launch of the BBC branded apps, because they offer new services, not an extension of current ones.

Newell said: “It is disappointing that the BBC Trust has decided to push this through quickly and avoid conducting a formal PVT, despite the BBC’s previously stated aims that ‘where actual or potential market impact outweighs public value’, the BBC should leave space clear for others’ and that ‘it must listen to legitimate concerns from commercial media players more carefully than it has in the past’.

“The launch of BBC mobile apps represents a significant change to the BBC Online service, and we believe it will have a significant and negative market impact upon the viability of the business models of commercial news organisations in the app market.”