woodwing

Asia has been a hotbed for newspaper iPad (and other tablet platform) editions right from when the iPad came out in 2010 and other tablets emerged after that. In Indonesia, Kompas Gramedia was the first daily newspaper in Asia on the iPad. In Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post was the first English daily newspaper in Asia on the iPad. In WoodWing Asia Pacific's backyard of Malaysia the newspaper publishers have also been quick to embrace the iPad and other tablets. The Star successfully launched first on the iPad, followed closely by the New Straits Times Press who launched three daily apps: Harian Metro, Berita Harian and the New Straits Times.

After having had a lot of success with their early editions, publishers have not been sitting idly by. In May this year, the South China Morning Post successfully moved to a new 'tablet 2.0' design, also adding much more content. For this project the South China Morning Post was conceptually assisted by Mario Garcia and his team.

Last week the New Straits Times in Malaysia also launched their 2.0 edition, again assisted by Mario Garcia who wrote a nice blog post about it. The design is a highly visual tabbed layout, which is easy to use and navigate:
 

I am looking forward to seeing many more newspaper publishers take their next big steps in building their next generation tablet editions. A lot of lessons have been learned over the past one and a half years with regards to what does and does not works on tablets and it is great to see that wisdom finding its way into these new much improved tablet editions.

These are exciting times indeed!