Friday, August 31, 2012 –
– SMH and The Age iPhone and tablet app downloads pass 1 million
– Total app downloads across all Fairfax products have now passed 5 million
– Fairfax masthead national online reach of 4.4 million people
– Stable combined print/digital masthead sales
1. Masthead app downloads pass one million
Downloads of iPhone and tablet apps for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have passed the one million milestone in July. This rise of 10 per cent in masthead app downloads on the previous month helped push the total number of downloads of Fairfax apps past the five million mark.
SMH tablet app downloads jumped 40,000 in the second full month since the release of version 2.0, while The Age for tablet app downloads jumped 37,000. The SMH iPhone app downloads added another 12,000 and The Age iPhone app added 10,000 during the month.
“The acceleration of the number of downloads for our mastheads, especially of the tablet apps, has been incredible since we released the new features,” CEO of Fairfax’s metro media division, Jack Matthews said.
“When we launched the iPad apps just over a year ago we said we wanted as many people as possible to experience them before we include them in digital subscriptions. These results continue to go well beyond our most optimistic forecasts.”
Daily tablet app usage has now passed 80,000.
The tablet editions have been well-received by consumers and clients alike and the architecture has formed the basis of the tablet app for The Australian Financial Review. The tablet app will launch with The Canberra Times in coming weeks. As well as the masthead apps, the most popular Fairfax apps by download include Domain, MyCareer, Weatherzone and RSVP.
2. Fairfax national reach 4.4 million people
The five Fairfax online news sites nationally were read by more than 4.4 million people for the month of July. Fairfax masthead national reach is 23 per cent higher than the audience of Nine News, current affairs and sport.
Fairfax masthead unique audiences dropped month-on-month with smh.com.au down 3 per cent and theage.com.au down 7 per cent, which reflected the market during the month. Overall, the online news category was down 2 per cent with the top five news sites down between 3 per cent and 8 per cent. Nine News was down 8 per cent.
Fairfax’s metropolitan digital brands delivered a gold performance during the London 2012 Olympic Games as they exceeded all other Australian news websites. Smh.com.au was the highest ranking Australian news website over the two week Olympic period, which started in late July. theage.com.au was also outstanding in third place.
3. Combined print/digital sales
There were no major moves from June to July in the combined print/digital sales of our major newspapers.
The Sunday Age sales rose 1 per cent on June driven by both print and digital edition growth, while combined print/digital sales fell 1 per cent for The Saturday Age.
The weekday SMH was off 1 per cent for the month in combined print/digital sales, while both the SMH on Saturday and The Sun-Herald were down 2 per cent month-on-month. There are no year-on-year comparisons for combined sales as the measure was only introduced on January 1 this year. Printed editions continued to show drops against sales of a year ago due to the previously reported initiatives to remove unsustainable circulation sales from our books.
/ENDS
Enquiries:
Miranda Schuppan
Communications Director
Fairfax Metro Media
T: +61 3 8667 2661
M: 0409 256 764
E: mschuppan@fairfaxmedia.com.au
