[The Guru]

The Beeb has at long last released a news App for the iPhone, you can grab it here in the iTunes Store. The BBC announced as follows which hints that other platforms will follow too

A BBC News app for the iPhone and iPad has been launched in the UK, the BBC has announced.

The free-to-download apps for Apple products were originally due to be made available in April 2010.

The UK launch was delayed while the BBC Trust, the corporation's governing body, assessed the proposals and their impact on the rest of the industry.

Apps for other devices such as Android phones will launch later in the year.

Similar apps for BBC Sport and iPlayer will also be coming soon.

The apps do not "represent a significant change to the BBC's existing public services," ruled the BBC Trust, meaning that further scrutiny was not required.

BBC Trustee Diane Coyle said that the body would continue to monitor the launch.

Many news organisations already offer apps that give people a quick and easy way to keep up with events.

Earlier in 2010, the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) said it feared the corporation would "damage the nascent market" for apps by entering the market with a free product.

"The concern the newspaper industry has is that the survival of our big independent news organisations largely depends on them being able to make money from new platforms other than print," said Dominic Ponsford, editor of Press Gazette.

"Mobile is a massive part of that and there is concern that the BBC could blow their fledgling apps out of the water by being such a dominant brand."

However the apps market was a space that the BBC could not ignore either, he added.

"The other side of it is that the BBC is also doomed unless it can embrace new readers on new platforms."

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[immaterialman]

How nice! You beat me to the story... downloading now

[The Guru]

Rather decently coded as well, much better than the ITN news app which has been relegated to page 4 now

[iMe]

Looks sweet on th iPad, bout blummin time though. It was really annoying me that the yanks were all praising the BBC app for the app for a month before we got the iPad and then when it finally came out here still no app. Please stop using my license fee to service other countries before the UK Beeb

[johnston411]

Just chucked it on mine and works very well. I like how you can slide the headlines right to left to find more and on wifi the live feed is nice too.

i check the football gossip column using opera mini most mornings but i can't find a way to view it on here yet

as for spending the licence fee on other countries first i think that's one of the things that has caused the idea of a massive review of the licence fee itself. Hopefully it will make the beeb a bit more proactive with their programming

[The Guru]

Tis indeed wonderful on the iPad and the live news works very well too, a bit grainy, but awesome! Lots of graphical prettyness!

[fowljr]

Just installed it on my iPhone 2G and I get a message saying we cannot stream live data outside of the UK..... I didn't know Norfolk was considered outside of the UK these days!

[tonybro]

Probably not even in the EU, Jim! Might even still be at war with Prussia!

[fowljr]

[neilm]

I get the same error message when trying to play Live News over WiFi. Something for the BBC to address I hope!