Verve Wireless has served an average of 100 million mobile news pages per month, the company says. The Associated Press-backed mobile website builder has already created sites for three McClatchy (NYSE: MNI) Company papers — The Sacramento Bee, The News & Observer and The Miami Herald — as well as the AP’s site and iPhone app. The Encinitas, CA-based company’s goal is to have served 2.2 billion mobile news pages by the end of this year. Much of the news served over mobile devices were driven by big stories, such as Michael Jackson’s death last summer.
For the most part, the numbers reflect the growing use of smartphones. Verve says that over 8 million readers accessed news from mobile devices via its mobile publishing platform, a five-fold increase from the same period a year prior. Also, about 3 million mobile apps have been downloaded up to this point, a number which is also expected to keep rising significantly.
While this sounds like good news for newspapers and other publishers, the ad revenue from mobile is still infinitesimal. That said, the space is still growing and it does give publishers a chance to learn from their PC experiences and to take some risks in hopes of finding the best revenue model for the mobile web.
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