The commercial networks might claim the free to air Aussie Nielsen figures, but online? It’s as easy as…
I’ll freely admit that I’m a big fan of the ABC, and it by far takes the lion’s share of my admittedly limited free to air watching time. Online, though is another story, as there’s many sources of information out there. According to a release from the ABC’s mobile division, though, I may soon be in a minority, as the division’s mobile records are being broken left, right and centre.
Amongst the ABC’s self-touted highlights, the ABC’s iPhone app has been downloaded one million times in the seventeen months. The mercantile side of my brain that wishes the ABC had more money wonders what would have happened if they’d charged the minimum $1.19 for it, but I suspect the answer would have been complaints about the ABC charging at all. The comparable Android app has only seen a comparatively meagre 10,000 downloads in the same time frame.
Clearly election fever drives app purchasing, as the ABC’s short lived Australia Votes App, available for iPhone, Symbian/Java, Android and Blackberry managed a very respectable 50,000 downloads in a short time frame. While we may not know who’s going to form government for days or weeks yet, we were clearly very keen on election news on election day. At 4pm on August the 21st, the Australia Votes app for iPhone was in such demand that the number of downloads per second placed it number seven worldwide on the iTunes Top Movers chart at 4pm on August 21st.
Switching out of election mode, the triple j Unearthed app lags behind slightly with 200,000 downloads, but it’s only been available for seven months and is clearly more niche-audience oriented. The two and a half months that the iPad version of the ABC’s app has been available has seen one hundred thousand downloads take place.
If Apps aren’t your style, the release also notes that the ABC’s mobile portal grew in traffic 105% year on year.
This begs the question — how do you access the ABC?
Sunny Kalsi
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 10:37 AMThe android apps for both news and votes are terrible compared to their iPhone equivalents. I can imagine people uninstalling them in frustration.
As for news, I really haven’t found many alternatives to up-to-date multi-format (i.e. video, text, transcripts, etc.) Aussie news. The mere fact that if there’s some news thing you want to watch, you don’t have to watch the video, you can just read the transcript — is a sell for me.
simon
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 10:40 AMthe australia votes app for android failed on election night and wasnt fixed for almost 5 days after polls closed.
abc could do alot more to improve their android app, including a widget.
instead of accessing abc, i just rss from google reader, until i see an article that interest me
VanOorsome
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 11:01 AMYeah rss with greader is much more efficient on the android platform than any dedicated app could ever be.
Also android phones in australia have not had a very long time to penetrate the market. So naturally the iphone, which has been available for much longer, will have a higher download rate for aussie apps.
Jedwardo
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 11:04 AMMost TV I watch is downloaded but almost all the Australian TV i watch is via iView and i use the app on my iPhone to watch ABC24 on my lunch breaks.
Dave
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 11:16 AMI watch a lot of iView on my PS3. It truly is freakin handy.
Daniel
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 12:14 PMAgreed – iView is awesome.
Peter Zaharis
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 1:14 PMI’ll third this.
Most nights I will browse iView and watch something through my PS3.
Ron
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 11:26 AMMost of the ABC TV content I watch is through iView, and I get my news from ABC Online through Google Reader (sync’d to my Desire with NewsRob).
Now that my Android platform has been upgraded to FROYO (iView works perfectly, ideally what I’d love from the ABC is to offer a lower res stream iView mobile site so I can use NEWS24 without gobbling up all my data. Alternatively if they could negotiate with the providers, like they have with a few ISPs like iPrimus, not to meter iView usage.
That would be a perfect world!