Loy Okezie
Last year, I wrote about Punch Newspapers subscription-based mobile news service called MobilePunch which attracted a lot of criticism given the fact that it simply makes no sense for users to pay to read news on their mobile phones. What ever happened to advertising revenues?
While I’m not sure if they still charge for their news, the mobile version is currently not accessible via mobile phone, as it displays a ‘HTTP Error 403 Forbidden’ message that reads: “You are not authorized to view this page. Please try loading a different page.”
But whatever the case may be, MobilePunch seems to have a new competition that might force them to rethink their mobile web strategy.
Update: Well, Mobinatrics doesn’t think so. They see “every major Nigerian Newspaper on the Newshunt platform soon such that consumers can toggle between newspapers and seek a second opinion about a news item”, according to Dika Oha, Public Affairs Executive at Mobinatrics.
Vanguard Newspaper, another major news competitor recently launched their own mobile application, powered by NewsHunt, a unique mobile application developed by Indian-based, Eterno Infotech and made available in Nigeria by Mobinatrics, Nigeria foremost and only mobile publishing business.
The mobile app enables you to read Vanguard Newspaper right from your mobile phone 24/7 on the go and is completely free.
What’s Unique?
The mobile application allows mobile users to communicate with the mobile community in nine different Indian languages effortlessly and without any configuration or structural changes to their handsets.
Mobile users across the globe can send and receive short messages in regional languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and English.
How It Works
This app works on the basic WAP/GPRS enabled Blackberry, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Erricson, LG phones and over 1,500 supported devices. To download the mobile newspaper app, you have to visit http://m.vanguardngr.com from your WAP/GPRS enabled mobile phone (GPRS charges may apply).
You can also visit the Vanguard website and request for an SMS (with a link to download the app) be sent to your mobile phone.
Once you download and run the app on your mobile phone, you’ll have to select which categories from Business to Entertainment to Style you would like to receive news. The app will load in seconds and then display the news category you’ve requested for. It’s quite easy to use, convenient and fast.
How It Sucks
Navigation – The mobile app has a navigation problem when you try to scroll through a particular page.
Content – It also does not display news content on the right category. As you can see from the image above, a sports content is being displayed on the Technology section. Perhaps that’s a problem with where the news was initially published.
App Icon – Since it’s not really Vanguard’s mobile app, the NewsHunt logo as an app icon is displayed on the applications menu.
Update 2: Read the official response from Mobinatrics on the comments section.
What’s Cool
On each page, you find an ad banner space (for advertisers) that when you click on, it prepares to call. It then asks if you want to continue to make the call. When you click ‘yes’ or ‘ok’, it instantly helps you to dial and call Vanguard’s advert sales department for enquiries.
My thoughts
Vanguard has demonstrated that reading news on the go should be free-of-charge. They’ve also shown that they understand how the mobile web works, especially as they display advertising on some pages where content is being read.
They currently have only two advertisers, namely Standard Chartered Bank and Jobberman – both of them advertising their mobile versions – though Jobberman could be a barter ad deal, as Jobberman also advertises Vanguard’s mobile app on its website’s blog.
That said, I think they need to build their own mobile app, instead of distributing news content via an existing mobile app platform such as NewsHunt. I’m not sure what it costs to run the NewsHunt mobile app as a service, but Eterno claims to offer a cost advantage by providing an end-to-end solution and management expertise from a single interface.
Update 3: NewsHunt is provided to the publisher for free. Read the comments section for an official response from Mobinatrics.
I’m guessing that this unique mobile application and service would provide increased revenues to Vanguard Newspaper through an enriched customer experience and enhanced value additions.
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13 Responses to Vanguard Launches Mobile App. But It’s Not Their Own.
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Naija's Michael Arrington! Nice one. Gbam!
Hi Loy,
I must commend you for taking out time to write this review, we appreciate.
I'm writing in, an official response from Mobinatrics as the Public Affairs Exec and we should schedule an official interview (I'm avail for that), feel free to tungle.me (http://tungle.me/dika).
Firstly, lets understand the whole Newshunt ecosystem. Newshunt is brought to you in Nigeria and Africa by Mobinatrics Ltd (www.mobinatrics) located in uptown Apapa as Nigeria foremost and only mobile publishing business amongst several other game-changing applications coming your way this summer. Newshunt is just a taste of what is to come shortly in the mobile play field here in Africa.
I will love to correct a few things mentioned in the post which includes that Vanguard will be posing a competition to Punch… I don't say so or we don't see it that way. At Mobinatrics, we are more concerned about consumer experience with finding and reading news anywhere they go and so you will be seeing every major Nigerian Newspaper on the Newshunt platform soon such that consumers can toggle between newspapers and seek a second opinion about a news item.
On Navigation, we haven't got any complaints yet but its highly possible that an over-sensitive track-ball or touch screen can contribute to it… if your device allows you to adjust it, please do, other test with another device.
On content not being in the right category, we have escalated the issue to our publishing partner (Vanguard) as they manage the CMS, as soon as they effect changes it will be corrected.
On Vanguard building their own app; we have no objection to it, Mobinatrics/Newshunt is a mobile news aggregator giving consumers options and a fleet of choices in life.
So who is Eterno? Eterno is our technology partner. When we first thought about mobile publishing some years ago, we wanted to build it from scratch, but we figured we could partner with an established player (actually the biggest in the fastest growing global technology market in the world being India) and we share alot in common with them economy wise, it only makes sense as we are now on our feet running with Newshunt.
We want to use this opportunity to tell other publishers that Newshunt is real and is provided to the publisher for free, it never cost them a dime.
But once more we appreciate your doing this post, actually the very first review on Newshunt Nigeria and to that we say congrats to you. Please Loy, tungle.me so we can have a chat ok or tweet me @dikaoha
Hi Dika,
Thanks for taking the time to respond here and also clearing up the air about the Newshunt service. I've updated the post.
Will be in touch so we can schedule an official interview.
Cheers, Loy
Loy, be the first to report that PunchNG.com website was hacked, it will take them 1 or 2 days to recover.
I did because ……..
Good development. Thousands of internet users are moving to mobile devices daily.
its a step forward,,im sure with time it would be refined
Not anyone can say undoubtably when txt message dating will explode are pleased did in the last few years on desktop machines. Though, we can almost say for sure that it will be here very soon. However, to make it easy for users to be able to connect and find what they’re interested in came across assess how this type of person hooking up currently. Less several years ago it wasn’t possible to get in touch to everybody in your social circle with some clicks. This has to be quickly possible. Were now seeing people doing a similar but using their palm.
MMS dating will dsicover an outburst in the next few months. With almost everyone and their dog having access to a phone, it’s inevitable that people will look for ways of reaching out to the dating world through their devices. In fact, it’s already happening to a certain degree. People carry their android almost anywhere they go. Making txt dating so simple anyone can do it.
the news in the toolbar doesnt change again, please work on it
[...] July, I wrote about Vanguard launching their news content on an exisiting mobile app powered by [...]
Well right now it doesn’t much impress me since I can go full screen with Opera and it seems to be a lot quicker at the moment, although once they get this whole thing off the ground it might shoot on past much of the competition. No idea but looks very interesting.
I love ur wat u people ave been doin and I will lik to b current on news