Mediatwits #177: Tablet News Apps Stagnate as Smartphone Apps Boom

Earlier this month, Canada’s Postmedia Network announced they were going to shutter the evening tablet editions at the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette and Calgary Herald. Tablets were one part of Postmedia’s “four platform strategy” that it started in 2014 which also included its smartphone app, website and print edition. When it was first announced the tablet edition was targeted at middle-aged readers who wanted to read the paper after dinner: “With interactive graphics, animation, embedded video and audio, the digital magazine will provide new dimensions to the news reading experience.” But that strategy ran into a bit of a speed bump in the form of low readership on tablets. You’ve got to wonder if smartphone adoption - especially the bigger screens on recent phones - has affected the use of tablets. Here in the U.S. 68 percent of adults now have a smartphone compared to 45 percent who have a tablet according to a new report from Pew Research. Here’s another noteworthy finding from the Pew report: tablet ownership seems to have plateaued in the past two years. But don’t discount tablets just yet. Two Canadian papers, The Toronto Star and La Presse, have announced tablet editions of their own. There’s also the announcement that Next Issue, the “Netflix of magazines,” would relaunch as a magazine app called Texture. We’ll discuss tablet editions and the ongoing changes in mobile media on this week’s Mediatwits podcast, with special guests Mario Garcia, founder at Garcia Media; Anthony Ha, writer at TechCrunch; Douglas Hebbard, publisher at Talking New Media; and regular guest Andrew Lih at American University. MediaShift’s Mark Glaser will host, with Jefferson Yen producing.

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