The proposal was for BBC News and BBC Sport apps plus a BBC iPlayer app, which were announced by the BBC at Mobile World Congress in February.

The UK’s eight main national newspaper publishers, grumbling that the launch would impact their ability to publish commercial apps in the nascent mobile marketplace, complained to the trust - as well as to government, prompting the trust to order a suspension and call the proposal in for consideration in March, since when the BBC News app has already clocked a million downloads overseas.

It commissioned a market report from Mediatique which says “the market for Apps could trend towards predominately free provision”.

Highlights from its conclusions…

“It’s likely that a majority of current users accessing BBC Online through Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) devices might download one or more BBC App.”

“The BBC’s proposed Apps could therefore be popular and of similar scale to Apps provided by other large content providers.”

“The existence of un-licensed Apps created by third parties offering BBC content also suggests that there is both a latent demand from users and requirement for official BBC offerings.”

“While the BBC does not compete for advertising revenues, it is possible that the BBC could reduce the volume of usage of other Apps and hence advertising revenues”

“The Trust’s analysis accepts that there could be potential overlaps with the news provision on other Apps, especially between advertising-supported proposals.”

“The proposed Apps would not include advertising. To some extent this could potentially make the BBC offering relatively more attractive to users than similar offerings with advertising.”

But: “there are currently a wide range of established free alternative providers in the market so the BBC would not be the only free App.”

“Where the market trends towards free provision, the Trust considers it likely that the online market and any variant of it will only support pay models where there is a specific hook, such as access to distinctive content or functionality. The Trust also noted that one of the most popular paid news Apps is that provided by the Guardian where users are charged for its download, but the same content is freely available online through a web browser and that it might be that demand exists due to the Guardian’s editorial approach or the functionality of the App. “

“While news and sport content may be considered important content genres for some App providers, it would be unlikely that demand for paid-for news Apps would be directly impacted by the BBC proposals unless the BBC’s editorial approach is considered sufficiently similar to those Apps to dampen demand. Absent such evidence that the BBC is the closest substitute to such paid for offerings it is unlikely that the BBC App alone would cause the market to develop in such as way as to prevent others successfully monetising Apps. In particular, the BBC would only be one of a range of other free content providers in the market.”

“Whilst the proposals could have some negative impact on other providers of Apps, the nature of the market and the BBC’s later entry is such that the extent of any such impact is difficult to precisely determine and, taking appropriate account of the market analysis provided by Mediatique and the Trust’s analysis, is likely to be limited and hence not expected to lead to a reduction in plurality in the Apps market”

Development cost for Apple and three other unnamed mobile operating systems is put at under £1 million by the trust - 0.7 percent of the BBC Online budget.