Newspapers try to block BBC iPhone apps

The BBC has announced plans to produce its first iPhone app for news by April; it will be free of charge and it is this which has upset the NPA, whose membership hopes to find new incomes streams by developing paid content for the iPad.

The NPA’s current members comprise Associated Newspapers, Express Newspapers, Financial Times, Guardian Newspapers, Independent Newspapers, MGN (Trinity Mirror national titles), News International and Telegraph Group; so it pretty much covers the whole of the national newspaper business.

The Daily Telegraph and the Independent have already launched iPhone apps (free of charge), while the Guardian’s one costs £2.39. However Apple’s iPad, should it be successful, could provide a much more attractive platform than the iPhone as a newspaper reader, as well as a new income stream.

‘Not for the first time, the BBC is preparing to muscle into a nascent market and trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers,’ said NPA director David Newell.

The NPA has asked the BBC Trust, which oversees the corporation to stop it from developing apps for the iPad, iPhone or other handsets.

A BBC spokesman said that its online service licencer, granted by the BBC Trust, was ‘quite explicit in allowing the BBC to repurpose its online content for consumption on mobile devices.’

The BBC said it has plans to enable World Cup matches to be watched live on mobile phones through its forthcoming sports app, and that it will follow up its iPhone apps with similar ones for Android and BlackBerrry handsets.

‘[Licence fee payers] tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them,’ said the BBC spokesman. ‘We are catching up with our audiences, and the same content that we broadcast on television and make available online can now be better enjoyed on the move.’