Future gets really serious about mobile

Good move here from Future:

06/01/14 Future, the award-winning digital media business and one of the world’s leading tablet publishers, today announces the formation of Design and Development Team, Mobile.

Led by Senior Editor and recent PPA Digital Native 2013 award winner Tom Dennis, the Design and Development Team will create new digital content types featuring Future’s brands and content. Using Future’s self-developed platforms along with leading third-party technology solutions, the apps created by this new team will complement Future’s existing digital edition strategy for Apple and Android newsstands.

Future have been quick to recognise the potential of tablets – and now seem to be taking general mobile development seriously. This unit reports into Mike Goldsmith, who has headed up their Newsstand work for a while now. (He talked at news:rewired a couple of years ago, and was making a lot of sense then…)

Much of the negative feedback around performance of magazine brands on mobile has been the result of half-hearted or shovelware efforts. It will be very interesting to see what comes of a serious effort.