Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

8 Amazing Facts about the I-S Magazine Tablet App

This Friday, July 19, marks one year since the launch of Singapore’s first–and still only–fully interactive lifestyle magazine app: the I-S Tablet App. (Read more about why you should download it here!)

In that time (drum roll, please), we’ve:

  • Won the Asian Publishing Award 2012 for Best Publishing App
  • Been approached by Apple to be one of their featured apps in the SG app store; in conjunction with a “Read it Here First” campaign in our magazines and the App Store (app users get the magazine a full day before it appears in print).
  • Partnered with MINI, Sony TV, Chope, Pan Pacific and more (thanks guys!) to offer the only truly interactive ads in town: including 360-degree visuals, embedded TV show trailers, hotlinking and direct table booking.
  • Published 26 issues of the magazine app, plus app-exclusive editions of 5 guides: Top Tables (dining), Travel, Singapore F1, After Hours (nightlife) and Lunch.
  • Branched out from iPad with the launch of an Android edition
  • Made a YouTube video (you’ll be able to catch a version of this on the big screen at the upcoming Films at the Fort outdoor movie festival).
  • Launched sister editions in Bangkok and Hong Kong
  • Campaigned against “crap apps”: repackaged PDFs, “free” apps you actually have to pay for, and other lame attempts to unfairly part readers from their money. The I-S app is designed from the ground up, truly interactive, free to download and every single issue in it is free.
  • Travelled to Vietnam to train Ringier Publishing in building magazine apps of their own.

We’ve continued to tweak and improve the app with every issue, and have some exciting app-related plans for the coming year. In the meantime, we thought it’d be fun to share some of our usage stats for the tech nerds among you. In fact, given how scarce usage stats are for the digital publishing industry at large, we figured disclosing some of our own numbers might be a good thing for everyone. So here we go:

  • We’ve accumulated almost 7,500 unique users in one year (that’s after you discount people who’ve upgraded each time we’ve put out a new version; which, inexplicably, some analytics providers don’t do). We’d hoped for 10,000, but hey we still have a couple of days to go…
  • Between them, users have activated the app more than 130,000 times. That means, on average (and with a little creative math), each user downloads two out of every three issues.
  • The vast majority (95%+) of those users are on iPad. Whether that’s because there aren’t as many Android users here, our Android marketing hasn’t been as strong, or some other mysterious cause, we’re not sure. Recently, Sony kindly lent us a bunch of Android tablets to play with, so we hope to make real headway on this shortly.
  • Interestingly, 14% of users already access the app via the iPad Mini. That’s despite the device only having been available since November. (The biggest individual device usage comes from the 3rd gen iPad at 33%.)
  • The highest traffic is at the end of the day: 15% of all usage comes between 10pm and midnight Singapore time. (5am-6am is the slowest hour.)
  • The average session length (i.e. how long the user spends engaging each time they activate the app) is 8.3 minutes. That’s pretty darn good, even compared with print.
  • The most popular edition to date, with as-near-as 4000 unique downloads, was this year’s Top Tables dining guide, which came out in March. (That may say more about Singaporean obsessions than our app, though.) The most popular regular issue (i.e. not a guide) was April’s “Battle of the flea markets”, which has now been downloaded almost 3,500 times. (Of course, all the old issues are still up there, so numbers continue to grow over time.)
  • Tied in last place for usage, with only one session originating from each of them in the last 12 months, are Colombia, Dijibouti, Guatemala, Guernsey and… Afghanistan. We guess when you’re under fire in Helmand there’s nothing quite as comforting as reading about new cupcake stores in Tiong Bahru. (Naturally, the overwhelming majority  of usage comes from Singapore; though it can be hard working out whether certain users are based overseas or simply using an overseas app store from here.)