Zaandam, The Netherlands – Launched in March exclusively for tablet presentation, the venture Brasil 247 has caught the attention of the publishing industry through its large number of downloads and by achieving economic success in a short period of time. Driven by experienced journalists and directed by Leonardo Attuch and Joaquim Castanheira, a pair of well-respected professionals in Brazilian journalism, Brasil 247 publishes twice daily using the WoodWing Tablet Publishing Solution and Content Delivery System.

“The acceptance by the readers and their feedback has surprised us a great deal,” said Attuch, CEO and Editor in Chief of Brasil 247. “Brasil 247 was the No. 1 app in the Brazilian App Store over a one-week period, and we've received very positive response to our project, developed in a partnership with Epyx, WoodWing Gold Solution Partner in Brazil. It is interesting to see that our app has a large number of downloads from the United States. Some readers are even comparing our product to The Daily. They appreciate that Brasil 247 is free and can be shared 100 percent via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail.”

Brasil 247 is not an adaptation of a printed newspaper. Rather, it was created specifically to take advantage of the resources and features available on the iPad. The publication provides news, views and analysis and reports on technological, economic, social, cultural and environmental events and trends. On weekends, the reader is offered the lifestyle magazine Oasis.

Free publication, and nearly break-even
Brasil 247 is created by a team of 25 professionals supported by a number of external people who can remotely access WoodWing’s cross-media publishing system Enterprise. Funded internally by the project innovators, ad revenue has already brought the publication close to the break-even point, Attuch said.

“Brasil 247 demonstrates the cost-efficiency of tablet publishing,” said Steve Schaffran, General Manager of WoodWing Latin America, “and this will show even more clearly when Brasil 247 moves to multiplatform support, including the Android and HTML5 versions. With our solution, it is also easy to publish several times a day to attract readers with the latest news. They respond to the way a tablet publication combines the dynamics of the Web with the character of a newspaper as a defined entity having a beginning and an end.”

The tablet market in Brazil

App download statistics show that about 200,000 tablets are already in use in Brazil. Thanks to the continuing growth of iPad sales and the advent of Android-based tablets such as the range of Samsung´s GALAXY tabs, 1.5 million tablets are expected in Brazil by the end of 2011. In addition, the Federal Government is studying the use of tablets in public schools.

WoodWing´s solution popular among daily newspapers

WoodWing´s Tablet Publishing Solution is used by many important daily newspapers around the world, including the South China Morning Post, Frankfurter Rundschau and Hamburger Abendblatt in Germany, Sunday Times in the UK, and Kompas in Indonesia. In 2010, the app of Frankfurter Rundschau was awarded with the European Newspaper Award, while The Sunday Times was ranked the world's No. 1 magazine and newspaper brand on the iPad, according to iMonitor’s assessment of the best apps of 2010.

Publishers worldwide have produced more than 2,500 daily, monthly or weekly issues of their tablet editions with well over a million downloads per month using WoodWing´s Content Delivery Service, making WoodWing the most popular tablet publishing solution on the market today. WoodWing maintains a continuously updated list of apps published using WoodWing´s solution at www.woodwing.com/tablet-gallery. Together with its solution partners worldwide, WoodWing offers tablet publishing workshops where attendees experience first-hand what it takes to create a digital magazine.