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The BBC has recorded 15 million downloads across the world of its apps on both mobile and tablet platforms within the first year of delivering applications across iOS and Android.

According to general manager for news and knowledge at the

BBC Phil Fearnley

, who outlined the figures in his presentation on four screen strategy to the News World Summit , around two thirds of those downloads were on iOS.

He told the conference the scale of change when it comes to the delivery of apps has been "dramatic" and while he said he could not say how many screens news outlets will need to deliver to in the future, he predicted a "phenomenal rate of change".

Outlining the BBC 's experience so far he said the UK audience had been accessing content on mobile devices in three different ways, via the desktop browser, an optimised version and through an app.

But he said when this was reviewed the broadcaster realised it could "almost guarantee we weren't giving the audience the best possibble experience we could".

"Because of the plethora of devices, the plethora of screen sizes, the plethora of access mechanisms … we knew we couldn't possibly satisfy all of the demand and give the best possible experience depending on capabilities of device."

So the BBC took a step back and delivered a "mobile responsible design proposition" to help it "deliver a really good news service".

This "allows us to scale across all different current and potential mobile forms", he added. "As new technologies are deployed we can bring those to market relatively quickly".

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Written by
Rachel McAthy

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