Thomson Reuters Launches BlackBerry, iPhone Apps; First Big Step In $1 Billion Multimedia Investment

This story was written by David Kaplan.

Balancing act: All three major news services' subscription businesses are hurting to some extent. And so, all three have been beefing up their multimedia offerings. Both AP and Bloombergwhich recently inked a deal that sends the former's content to the latter focused their multimedia efforts as a way of broadening their consumer appeal with their mobile apps. In particular, the AP hopes to use multimedia as way to carve out an e-commerce business. Thomson Reuters' approach is more of a balancing act between those who rely on strictly financial and the general business professional. The effort is a long term one. And while last week's Q1 results were largely positiveprofits and revenues rose by double digitsthe media segment fell 18 percent, meaning that the business needs to quickly develop new revenue streams.

Subscription/ad rev hybrid: I spoke to both Ahearn and Alisa Bowen, Thomson Reuters' SVP, head of consumer publishing, after testing out the iPhone app last week. While both apps are being released free to BlackBerry and iPhone users, the company wants to turn them into products that generate both subscription and advertising revenue. The subscription part is at least several months down the road, while the advertising aspect is open for business on day one. For the first day or so, the apps will only carry house ads, Ahearn and Bowen said. More about the apps' specific features after the jump.

Different apps for different audiences: The Thomson Reuters News Pro app has different characteristics for each of the two devices. The BlackBerry app is more text-centric, while the iPhone places more emphasis on the video and photo features. Ahearn: "The iPhone app is targeted to all business professionals, not just financial consumers, or users in legal or health and science. It's for Thomson Reuters professional audience writ large." He says the company will roll out a number of other products this year. "You'll see a variety of multimedia offerings across online, mobile as well as the terminals over the course of this year. We're investing $1 billion in the middle of what is arguably one of the most difficult economic periods we've seen in decades." The differences between what's available on each device also depends on the individual limitations of the two. For example, e-mailing and sharing of news stories is available on the BlackBerry, while Bowen said that the iPhone structure made the process too cumbersome for now. (The iPhone app was created by Thomson Reuters internally, while the company partnered with Handmark for the development of the BlackBerry tool.)

BlackBerry will feature commentary: The Blackberry app is more geared to Thomson Reuters' traditional financial professional customer. Bowen: "One of the differences is the volume of content being pumped into th two devices. The BlackBerry product is designed as a reading product for the beginning of the day and the end of the day, or between business appointments. And so, the BlackBerry is more focused on organizing a huge range of content." Therefore for now, the BlackBerry app will feature commentary and analysis, which Ahearn and Bowen described as a major new push for the company as it seeks to differentiate itself from its competitors. Before the implosion of Cond Nast Portfolio, Thomson Reuters lured popular blogger finance Felix Salmon to start an opinion column. The month before that, the company tapped investment columnist Neil Collins to do the same. In general, the analysis features are seen as a key part of eventually attracting paid mobile subscribers.

Aiming for 'real' real-time: Ahearn acknowledged that the meaning of real-time has changed somewhat in the past few years, but its value has not lessened. "Real-time to a financial trader is measured in fractions of seconds. The web publishing world is nowhere near there. For example, a news site like paidContent publishes in real-time, in that your content is delivered immediately across a variety of sites. But it isn't trading-oriented, it isn't 'real' real-time. So is the introduction of these apps meant to give our user base access to the information at the same time they would see it on the current Reuters.com network? Yes. Is that true real-time? Will it erode the value of our terminal business? No. We segment our content by time, by content type and ultimately, by user value."

By David Kaplan