The Hindu prides in itself in being proactive in embracing digital technologies and delivering content in newer formats for the new age audiences.
In keeping with the trend, The Hindu has recently launched The Hindu App for Android mobile devices on the Google Play Store. The soft launch has met with overwhelmingly positive response, and by the time you read this, The Hindu has already launched the second build of the App taking into account the first flush of reader responses. The Hindu invites its readers to try it out first hand on mobile devices by downloading it here - >The Hindu App on Google Play Store .
To reach out to the widest possible audience on the Android platform, the App has been built to be compatible on devices running Android 2.2 (Froyo) and above. The Android platform is of considerable interest because it the fastest growing mobile operating platform in the world. Also, Android dominates emerging markets like like India, where it is available on the entry-level smartphones.
Highly customisable
The Hindu has made the App highly customisable so that the reader can fill in the home screen with preferred news settings - it could be city news, sport news or even the opinion pages.
The Hindu app developed by Mobstac also takes into account the geo-location data of the smart device and automatically provides local news. (One can toggle ‘detect location’ from the App’s settings to disable this function.)
Considering the dodgy mobile data connectivity, the App also provides an ‘offline’ reading feature. All the users have to do is mark the articles they are browsing as ‘favourites’ to make it available “offline”.
Area of growth
The Hindu’s content delivery on mobile platforms is growing at a fast pace. Apart from the mobile site - >m.thehindu.com , The Hindu App for the iPad on the iTunes App Store has been published.
The statistics of mobile readership has been very encouraging and has registered a 150 per cent increase in unique visitors to the website from mobile devices year-on-year. The Android platform has seen the better growth rate - a 250 per cent increase year on year in terms of unique users.
Do send us your feedback on the >Android App . We are keen to know how you find it, and it would help us make appropriate changes.
