James Delahunty
20 Feb 2010 5:36
The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) has called on the BBC Trust to block the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from providing new applications for the iPhone and (later) Blackerry. The BBC announced at the Mobile World Congress that it would offer new iPhone apps to provide BBC News and BBC Sport content to mobile users. The move was always going to be scrutinized by private news content providers who would see the BBC as a threat to a commercial business model on mobile platforms.
"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 David Newell, director of the NPA. "This is not, as the BBC argues, an extension of its existing online service, but an intrusion into a very tightly defined, separate market." The BBC disagrees with this assessment however, and says that it is providing the apps at the request of TV-license-payers who wanted more options to consume content (they technically paid for) with mobile phones.
"They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them," BBC's Erik Huggers said. "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."
The BBC News application will provide articles, video and audio content from the BBC News website, while the BBC Sport app will focus firstly on football because the World Cup kicks off in June. Users of the application will be able to view World Cup games live on their iPhones. Later in the year, the BBC will expand the available sports content.