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Hello again.

Today I’m pleased to announce the launch of the

In the past year we have seen a significant increase in Windows Phone usage. The number of Windows Phone users accessing the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Sport mobile site has increased 54% year-on-year. Last month Ö÷²¥´óÐã Sport had over 800,000 Windows Phone users. This means the target audience for a Windows Phone app is much larger than when we first launched the iOS/Android/Kindle apps.

In response to the increased usage – we have spent the last few months creating a Windows Phone app that utilises the Web Application Template . This template meant we could offer an app with greater functionality to users than the Sport mobile site (e.g. live tile, native share, native menu) – and have a foundation to build additional features in the future.

We’ve released an app that covers the core needs of the audience: live sport news, stats, fixtures and results, curated by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s team of sport journalists. Video and push alerts will be unavailable on launch. We will monitor app usage & user feedback, alongside other operating systems, and use this to make decisions about additional functionality for the Windows Phone app. As a publicly funded organisation the Ö÷²¥´óÐã needs to factor in how large an audience can be reached with a particular app.

Features

• Ö÷²¥´óÐã screen displaying the top stories across the world of sport, curated by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s team of sport journalists.

• Dedicated indexes for dozens of sports, including football, F1, cricket, rugby union, rugby league, tennis and golf

• Live tile showing top sport headlines

• Native share - share stories and results with your friends and followers

• Comprehensive football news, analysis, live scores, tables, match stats and text commentaries – plus the gossip column

• Sections for UK nations and global sport events

The app is now available in the UK for Windows Phone 8 and 8.1. I encourage you to download it; let me know your feedback via blog comments, email or the Windows Phone store. As I mentioned above – based on download figures & user feedback we will look to add additional features to this app.

Ryan Thomas Hewitt is Senior Business Analyst, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Sport