Zaandam, The Netherlands - WoodWing Software today announced that The Malaysian Reserve has become the first newspaper to publish its news using WoodWing's iPhone Newsreader.

The Malaysian Reserve-branded iPhone app is already available worldwide as a free download from Apple's App Store.

WoodWing's iPhone Newsreader service provides publishers of all kinds a quick way to offer their audience online content through a company-branded iPhone application, supporting text, images and video both for editorial content and advertisements.

The Malaysian Reserve's new push after a successful launch

Adoption of the WoodWing app is part of a new push by The Malaysian Reserve to bring its concise, high-quality business news to new delivery channels, after having successfully established itself in print after its launch two years ago. "In Malaysia, the iPhone has been a great success, and we see it as a great opportunity to be the first newspaper in Malaysia to offer an iPhone app," said Syed Fazilla, CEO of The Malaysian Reserve.

"Internationally, iPhone newsreader apps are among the most popular downloads from the Apple's App Store and have proven to be great tools for publishers to extend their brand," said Remco Koster, Managing Director of WoodWing Asia Pacific. "I am happy and proud that The Malaysian Reserve is again proving itself to be a forward-looking newspaper. They are the first customer to adopt WoodWing's branded iPhone Newsreader."

Growing market share

"The analysts of Piper Jaffray expect Apple to sell about 36 million iPhones in 2010, after about 25 million last year," said Erik Schut, President of WoodWing Software. "The iPhone has a proven record as the most important mobile publishing channel in the market, so publishers cannot afford to miss the opportunities an iPhone newsreader offers to their business. Nielsen, a leading marketing and media information company, reported that iPhone users are a very attractive target group both in terms of age and income."

In the United States, the Audit Bureau of Circulation has allowed publishers to count their downloaded apps as part of their audited circulation. The Guardian in the United Kingdom and Bild, published by Axel Springer in Germany, have proven that iPhone users are even willing to pay a fee to download and install their application.

WoodWing's full-service model for the iPhone Newsreader

Publishers only have to provide WoodWing with their corporate design elements and can select their own colors and icons to use inside their app. WoodWing then creates the branded iPhone Newsreader, takes care of the integration with the customer's CMS, and makes the app available for download in Apple's App Store. The iPhone app retrieves its content from a WoodWing server in the cloud. This server fetches the news from the publisher's content management system, Web site or RSS feed. Hosting and data traffic are also included in the service.

New Asia Pacific cloud

The data of The Malaysian Reserve app is served from the recently established Asia Pacific cloud in Singapore. Because the cloud is directly connected to the powerful Singtel backbone, performance of the branded apps are guaranteed throughout the Asia Pacific area.