Mobiles Republic Releases Key News Usage Findings; Confirms News Consumption Significantly on the Rise

SAN FRANCISCO, June 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobiles Republic®, a leading global news syndication company, today released findings from its 2013 survey of news-reading habits. The study, based on the responses of more than 8,000 users of Mobiles Republic's News Republic® app in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.A., identified a range of trends and key indicators. These include the finding that tablet news consumption has more than doubled -- 30 percent of tablet users rely on their devices several times a day to check the latest news -- in contrast to just 12 percent a year ago; that the most important criteria for consumers of mobile news are that news is accurate, free, fresh and multi-sourced (in that order of consumer priority); and, that using such social media outlets as Facebook and Twitter for news updates continues to rise. These factoids and more were released today by Mobiles Republic summarized here in an infographic entitled "The change in news reading habits 2013".

"Due to mass adoption of consumer mobile devices, the access and appetite for trusted news continues to increase. People want to remain informed in a timely manner, more so now than ever before in our world's recorded history," said Gilles Raymond, said mobile industry veteran and CEO of Mobiles Republic. "We've found that reading news on tablets has more than doubled year over year. This is because the tablet allows for new trends in news consumption -- news snacking, for example, and because news syndication apps that provide all of a user's favorite news sources within one app is a ready cure for information overload while increasing the user's level of being informed on personal topics.  We believe our research can reassure the world's primary news outlets, while also confirms they must have multiple streams of mobile news distribution in order to reach the mobile audiences and continue to thrive."

Other Key Findings

People Increasingly Turn to Aggregators for News
In 2013, 73 percent of those surveyed said they use aggregators intensively, up from 33 percent a year ago. Intensive use of branded news applications (such as leading national dailies) declined from 60 percent to 40 over the same period. 

People Are Spending Less Time Checking on News Via All Sources Except Tablets, and Check News More Frequently
Between 2012 and 2013 there was a 12 percent increase in tablet users spending more than 30 minutes checking on news. Overall Mobile usage plummeted by 9 percent, although 88 percent of mobile readers reported they look for news several times a week.

Male News Junkies Greatly Outnumber Their Female Counterparts
However, that could be changing. Women news junkies accounted for 25 percent of the total surveyed in 2013 (up from 19.7 percent in 2012), with women aged between 30 and 49 exhibiting the greatest appetites for news, at 43 percent.

News Republic is a free app that delivers licensed news from more than 800 leading local, global and topic-based news sources. It provides more than 10,000 full-length articles each day, and allows users to create customized news channels.  

An infographic is published for a snapshot of these findings and can be accessed here: http://www.mobilesrepublic.com/infographic2013

About Mobiles Republic
Mobiles Republic® is the leading source of trusted news on the go.  Mobiles Republic partners with more than 800 top global and regional news sources ranging from Associated Press, The Huffington Post, Elle, Al Jazeera, The Financial Times and The Guardian, to AOL and CBS Interactive. Each source can be viewed in easy to use, simple to customize, elegant layouts optimized for Android and Apple smartphones and tablets, and for Windows 8 devices. The company's popular mobile apps are News Republic®, Appy Geek™, Appy Gamer™, Sports Republic™ and GlamLife™. In addition to its apps, the company is also dedicated to mobile technology innovation. Its proprietary multilingual and localization smart search technology, TagNav®, delivers news personalized to a user's specific tastes and needs based on more than 1,000,000 topics.  Mobiles Republic is also the technology partner powering such mobile ecosystem innovations as BlinkFeed™, the breakthrough content user-interface on HTC One smartphones.  Mobiles Republic is rapidly expanding and is transforming mobile news consumption. Its apps already have more than 12 million active users, plus millions of preloads on mobile devices of such brands as Sony, Samsung and Lenovo. Its news engine generates in excess of 10 million page views per day of licensed content, and has to date generated more than two billion news articles views. Mobiles Republic, headquartered in Bordeaux, France, has offices around the world including a U.S. office in San Francisco, California. More information is available here: http://www.mobilesrepublic.com/.

SOURCE Mobiles Republic