Quark announced today that Metro, the UK’s leading urban media brand, published a revamped iPhone version of their app using PressRun, the publishing platform that brings print publications to digital devices using HTML5, combining rich design and XML automation.

Metro’s new iOS iPhone version adds to the brand’s growing digital product suite as it looks to offer its on-the-move consumers more by providing easy access to its cross-platform content.

With an intuitive interface and navigation, Metro’s new app allows readers to access the digital edition of the newspaper on their iPhone, and offers interactive features like full-screen videos, audio clips, and photo galleries.

Thanks to a free subscription service, users can receive Metro’s iPhone Edition automatically every day through Newsstand, which also provides off-line reading capabilities. Featured by Apple in the iTunes Editor’s Choice section, the new Metro app includes high-resolution images for retina display and optimized content at a fraction of the typical file size for PDF-based apps, guaranteeing a faster download and a sleeker reading experience.

The launch follows the success of the Metro Tablet Edition, also created with PressRun (http://www.pressrun.com/clients/metro-tablet), which is nearing 600,000 downloads since its launch in October 2011. The iPad app was the winner of the 2012 Newspaper Awards for Newspaper App of the Year.

Thanks to PressRun, Metro is able to automate the majority of the publishing process from XML and use the layout software they are familiar with, Adobe InDesign, to create custom pages for the cover, section fronts, etc. While streamlining multi-platform publishing, PressRun allows Metro to maintain a strong editorial vision for presenting content across different media and easily scale to reach new platforms.

Jamie Walters, Product Development Director at Metro, said, “We’re continuing to innovate and develop our mobile and digital offerings and it’s great to see our tablet edition go from strength to strength, providing advertisers with further innovative and custom creative solutions.” He added, “We’re committed to providing urbanites more ways to engage with Metro throughout the day across the channels that best suit them.”

Shaun Barriball, Vice President of Mobile at Quark, said, “As a daily publication, Metro has incredibly tight deadlines and works around the clock to deliver news as it happens. Being able to produce engaging content and deliver it automatically to multiple devices is the key to succeed in such a fast-paced industry. At Quark we were thrilled to help Metro produce their successful iPad app last year and we are now delighted to continue to work with them on their digital publishing journey with their iPhone edition.”

Metro’s iPhone app can be downloaded for free from the App Store at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/metro-phone-edition/id465059515?mt=8.
 
PressRun 3.0 includes iPhone support and provides a complete user guide for PressRun designers creating interactive tablet magazines, as well as a suite of examples showing each of the widgets supported by PressRun. PressRun 3.0 can be downloaded for free from the App Store at http://itunes.apple.com/app/pressrun/id431600497?mt=8. Users who have registered with my.pressrun.com are able to login and review issues they have created.