BBC News has overtaken Apple News as the biggest news app in the UK in the year since Press Gazette’s last annual ranking.
BBC News had a UK app audience aged 15 and up of 14.2 million people in October after growth of 12% in a year, according to the latest Ipsos iris data.
The Apple News app, meanwhile, had a UK audience of 14 million after 4% year-on-year growth. However Ipsos noted that the app was impacted by an issue affecting traffic measurement in the in IOS 17.2 operating system with a fix expected to be rolled out soon. Ipsos said traffic numbers are expected to recover over time.
The BBC News app, which last saw a major update in the UK in the summer of 2023, also beat Apple News for total minutes spent (1.7 billion versus 1.3 billion) and average minutes per person (120 versus 91 minutes).
Apple News is a free aggregator that comes installed as default on all Apple devices such as iPhones, with most major news organisations making their content available through the app where it is curated by editors. However users can choose to pay for the premium version, Apple News+, which pays newspaper and magazine publishers for making more available, including normally paid-for content.
Samsung’s equivalent default free news app, Upday, dropped down the ranking in the past year with its audience falling by 44% to 1 million. This was the biggest year-on-year drop of any of the news apps, followed by Daily Mail’s newspaper editions app Mail+ (down 27% to 229,328) and the Mirror (down 24% to 217,468).
Google’s own aggregator Google News fell by 13% to 1.6 million.
Google’s Discover smartphone news platform is not tracked on these figures because it is not a separate app.
The biggest growth in the past year was at Substack, whose app was up 249% to reach 468,803 people in October. It was followed by the New York Times Crossword app, up 188% to 553,884 (although this is not a news app, it is included because of its owner and the trend towards news publishers investing in non-news verticals like games).
Behind BBC News and Apple News, Sky News remained the third-biggest news app (audience of 3.5 million, up 24% year-on-year) but personal finance brand Money Saving Expert (2.4 million, up 40%) overtook The Guardian (2.2 million, down 4%) to take fourth spot.
The apps included in the ranking all feature within the list of the top 1,000 apps in the UK in October according to Ipsos iris data. This means that some news apps, including GB News, are not featured even if they appeared last year.
Mail Online overtook The Guardian to take third place when ranked by total minutes. The DMGT brand’s app recorded 609.3 million minutes in October after a dip of 9%, compared to a fall of 34% to 499.2 million for The Guardian.
Aside from Substack and The New York Times Crossword, which were both also top for monthly minutes growth, LBC saw the biggest jump of 72% to 32.3 million minutes in October.
The Times and Sunday Times app, although sixth for total minutes spent (456.8 million), was top for average minutes per person (780).
Its next nearest competitor for minutes per person was The Telegraph, on 480 (and 498.9 million total minutes).
Top UK sports news apps ranked: BBC Sport leads
The BBC Sport app continued to reach more than twice as many people (4.1 million) as the Sky Sports offering (1.8 million) following drops of 3% and 4% respectively.
Most of the sports apps were down year-on-year but the biggest percentage change was at ESPN, which dropped by 46% to 680,639.
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