A new survey by Ipsos iris reveals that Apple News was the most popular news app in the UK in December 2021. Used by 13.2 million people, Apple News captured 27% of all internet users over 15 years of age in the UK.
With a very slight margin, the BBC News app came in the second position with 12.5 million people which accounted for 25% of all internet users reached.
Apple News is a free news app by Apple that offers journalism from leading news companies like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, People, Time, and others. And its paid version, Apple News+, gives access to premium content from hundreds of magazines, from international, national, and local newspapers, audio stories, and more.
Apple News app beat popular legacy media apps in the UK
In addition to BBC News app, Apple News app beat other popular legacy media apps in the UK: Sky News came in fourth place with 3.3 million people and 7% reach, The Guardian in sixth place with 2.1m people and 4% reach, and Mail Online in seventh place with 1.7m people and 3% reach.
Having said that, the time spent on the Apple News app was less than BBC and other news apps On Apple News the average minutes per person was 93 minutes, on BBC the average minutes per person was 172 minutes and Mail Online had the highest average minutes spent with the app 400 minutes per person. The report explains:
On the whole average engagement time per person was much higher for news apps linked to single brands (166 minutes) compared to apps that aggregated news (85 minutes) which is unsurprising given that the audience of single-brand apps is likely to consist of readers loyal to that title.
As an aggregate news app, Apple News is also the favorite news app of U.S President Joe Biden to get daily updates and during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, the news app gained more than 125 million new monthly subscribers because of its verified and accurate information at a time of widespread misinformation.
Apple News is available on the App Store for free. It is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
