The Guardian seeks mobile agency to broaden small-screen offerings
The Guardian is to begin a major push into mobile later this year.
The national newspaper is seeking an agency to help develop its mobile site. It has been in discussions with potential partners for several months and is believed to be close to naming a winner.
The Guardian is the biggest online newspaper, with 18.7m unique users a month according to recent ABCE figures. Other national newspapers including The Sun, The Times, Metro and News of the World have all developed strong mobile sites over the past year.
In April The Guardian launched a mobile jobs site with service provider WIN. It's now looking to extend this service to include content from the printed newspaper.
This could mean The Guardian kills off its current AvantGo PDA service, which it launched in 2000 but which has not been heavily marketed for some time.
Steve Wing, head of commercial development for Guardian News & Media, said that a "perfect storm" of data tariffs, handsets and consumer awareness had developed, making an ideal climate in which to launch a mobile proposition.
"We're examining what The Guardian will look like on small screens and what it means to our audience as a brand," said Wing.
"The Guardian Jobs mobile site was part of a process of development and we're now more interested in mobile than ever."
Wing said that The Guardian had been on a "watching brief" for mobile over the past two years. Service providers Minick, Momac and WIN are believed to be among the top contenders for the contract.
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