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> Monday, December 14, 2009
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The Guardian Partners with 2ergo to Create First Paid-For iPhone App for a UK National Newspaper

2ergo has built a paid-for iPhone app for the Guardian, which allows users to view personalised content from guardian.co.uk.

An industry first, the Guardian app costs £2.39. Revolutionising news consumption, the app provides a new way to browse and access content. Completely ad-free for launch, it will allow users to view all recent guardian.co.uk content and to customise content to personal interests. Users will be able to personalise their home page content, download award-winning Guardian podcasts, search news content and save content for offline access. The app also includes a "trending" feature, which highlights popular news and search terms, so users can access the most popular content instantly.

"2ergo's dedicated smartphone applications development team has created apps for media giants such as ABC in Australia and FOX News in the United States. The team has considerable expertise in delivering apps that optimise news and media content for mobile, so we were ideally placed to work with the Guardian on this project. The high quality app which we have built will give Guardian readers access to the paper's vast amount of online content via the iPhone and iPod touch," said Chris Brassington, Group Managing Director of 2ergo.

"Guardian.co.uk has more than 30 million unique users each month, and more than 400,000 people access the Guardian's mobile site from their iPhone or iPod touch, so developing this app was the natural next step and a way of appealing to our tech savvy audience. 2ergo was the obvious partner to work with us to create this app due to their proven capability of translating content rich sites into paid-for mobile applications. The app fits with the Guardian's reputation as innovators in online publishing and offers any time access to the Guardian's high quality content," said Mike Bracken, Technology Director at Guardian News & Media.

As well as designing and developing iPhone apps, 2ergo's product portfolio includes an innovative suite of mobile publishing, content management, interactive messaging, ticketing and couponing, mobile payment, and security solutions to deliver a comprehensive, 360 approach to mobile marketing and mobile customer communications.

2ergo helps major brands realise the opportunities of mobile and currently works with companies such as O2, Yahoo!, FOX News, ABC, National Geographic Channel and Rightmove. 2ergo also partners with India's Living Media Group, publishers of India Today. 2ergo's recent app for Rightmove.co.uk, the UK's number one property website, reached number one in the iTunes App store within the first week of release. It was downloaded 150,000 times in its first month with an average of 42,000 users accessing the app every day which equates to more than 1.5million searches taking place via the site in its first month.

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Notes to editors:

Further details about the app is available at www.guardian.co.uk/iphone

For further information, please contact:

Clair Whitefield

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

Tel: +44 (0)207 309 1018

Email: clair.whitefield@uk.ogilvypr.com

Clare Gibbins

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

Tel: +44 (0)207 309 1037

Email: clare.gibbins@uk.ogilvypr.com

Michael Alexander

Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

Tel : +44 (0)207 345 3047

Email : michael.alexander@ogilvy.com

Alex Black

2ergo Group

Tel: +44 (0)161 874 4222

Email: alex.black@2ergo.com

Hayley Dunlop

Press Officer, Guardian News & Media

Tel: +44 (0)20 3353 3818

Email: hayley.dunlop@guardian.co.uk