RTÉ Digital has launched the next generation of its popular RTÉ News Now App for Android and iPad users. This follows the launch of the iPhone app earlier this year.
The app, part of RTÉ’s delivery of a rolling news service incorporating TV, radio, mobile and outdoor screens offers new features as well as a greatly expanded range of content, with 28 categories including national and international news, sport, entertainment and science and technology.
According to the latest research by Behaviours & Attitudes (May 2014), the RTÉ News Now App is currently the most used and recognised news app in Ireland and is used by17% of adults. To date the app has been downloaded over 1.2 million times, 270,000 of these by international users. On average the app delivers 57 million page impressions each month, the highest number of impressions across all of RTÉ’s mobile services.
Changes to the new app include personalisation features that allow users to select and prioritise the content categories they use most often, push notifications alerting users to breaking news and updates and sign-in allowing synchronisation of news feeds across multiple devices. In addition the app includes improved sports coverage including pre and post match analysis, new live radio streams of RTÉ Radio1 and RTÉ 2FM in addition to the RTÉ News Now TV channel stream as well as access to audio and video content created by the RTÉ Newsroom including extra online and exclusive content.
The RTÉ News Now app was designed by RTÉ Digital’s in-house team and developed in partnership with Irish company Ammeon while the push notification and real-time app analytics technology was provided by the Irish-start up company Element Wave.
As part of the launch RTÉ Digital has published a video about the app’s development which is below.
