Handmark today announced it plans to launch thousands of mobile news applications supporting more than 500 newspapers, magazines and other content publishers worldwide in 2010.
The mobile market in the U.S. is experiencing explosive growth, with more than 120 million smartphones projected to be in use by 2014 and one in five Americans using their mobile device to access the Internet every day, said Handmark.
According to a recent survey by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, more than half of the surveyed publishers plan to launch a mobile news application in the next 24 months. A third of the respondents also believe that mobile will have a significant impact on their publication’s revenue in just three years.
Handmark believes it is uniquely positioned to lead the burgeoning mobile publishing market with its Mobile Publishing Platform. It enables a publisher to create a new channel with their own customized, branded, always-on mobile applications, quickly and easily, across the widest range of mobile devices.
“The rapid proliferation of smartphones paired with the growing expectation consumers have for information at their fingertips underlines why it is absolutely essential publishers have a plan for mobile beyond basic Web browsing,” said Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO.
Handmark runs an App store, not unlike the iPhone App Store, Android Market, Blackberry App World, Palm App Catalog, Nokia Ovi Store, Windows Mobile Marketplace, The Samsung Application Store and LG Application.com which provide a platform for marketing, selling and distributing software.
But Handmark is a content aggregator. It will support many different platforms.
Handmark has been one of the leading distributors of mobile content and storefronts for 10 years. Handmark says it is the only partner to offer a full service mobile application solution including not only development, but distribution across more than 50 channels, with monetization capabilities of publishers’ mobile applications.
