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The BBC has announced a new range of free applications “that will deliver its online services to mobile devices, starting with BBC News in April.”

 

Britain’s The Guardian is reporting that the BBC “is also considering an iPlayer application for release later in the year,” adding that “BBC Sport will follow News, launching its application in May. Both apps will be launched in the U.K., and a global version.”

 

Anglotopia.net blogger Jonathan Thomas writes that while “many other British news sources have gotten on the iPhone (News - Alert) bandwagon and put out some pretty amazing apps,” the BBC has been “surprisingly absent from this innovation, considering their embrace of digital innovation in the past with the iPlayer.”

Currently, Thomas noted, “the only BBC applications in the iTunes store are unofficial aggregators that leave a lot to be desired -- they cost money and add no value than any other RSS reader.”

 

The official apps, which The Beeb’s officials hope supplant the popular unauthorized BBC apps, are designed to give license payers an “authorized alternative as mobile phones become more powerful and connectivity more accessible,” The Guardian noted, adding that in December, “the official mobile BBC site attracted 1,851,000 visitors.”

 

TimesOnline’s Nic Fildes wrote that it’s” the latest example of traditional media organizations embracing the mobile phone to try to capture audiences that have started consuming content in different ways.”

 

The BBC’s director of future media and technology, Erik Huggers, seems to agree. He told attendees at the Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) in Barcelona that it’s been 12 years since the launch of BBC Online, “but as media converges and technology accelerates, license fee payers are increasingly using sophisticated handheld devices to access information. They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them.”

 

A range of unauthorized BBC applications “are already available and fairly popular. According to the second largest app store GetJar, an unauthorized version of BBC Mobile was downloaded 110,032 times by January,” The Guardian noted.

 

The BBC iPlayer is already optimized for mobile browsers, and available for Nokia’s (News - Alert) Ovi app store.