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NBR launches new smartphone offer

The media company has made changes to its technology stack.

Tue, 17 Mar 2020

NBR is relaunching its smartphone-only subscription after making the hard decision to discontinue its newly-released mobile app from the market.

NBR advisory board chairman Richard Bell said over the past three years, the company had transformed its technology stack, user experience and backend platforms to ensure subscribers had the best possible experience.

With that in mind, NBR had decided to discontinue the app because uptake had been slower than expected and usability was less than it had hoped for, he said.

“We couldn’t guarantee that the app will give our subscribers the best possible user experience when consuming our content,” he said. “Running an app can be an extremely time and cost-consuming exercise, which requires updates, downloads and constant tweaking, which we are finding is frustrating and disrupting our valuable community.”

Bell said with the current impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the global economy, NBR was aware subscribers wanted quick and easy access to the latest news. At the same time, the media company had to be mindful of the risks in investing more in an app that wasn’t delivering on expectation.

“We’d prefer to make the investment in content because that’s what people are looking for,” he said.

Based on feedback and subscriber demand, NBR is releasing a mobile-only smartphone subscription today with a great user experience, which is simpler for subscribers to use. This mobile-only subscription will cost $14.95 a month, a great discount on the full monthly subscription cost.

The company has spent the past two years optimising and rebuilding both its mobile and desktop sites and is confident this will continue to please subscribers, given research shows 80% of NBR content is consumed via its mobile responsive website or desktop.

Bell said as chairman he’s proud to say NBR has shifted from a newspaper business reliant on advertising to a fully integrated tech media business that has tripled its online revenue in the past 18 months.  

The NBR mobile app is no longer available for download. Existing users will be able to use the app but user experience will be less than optimal.

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