The Economist launches on Android

By The Economist online

AND now, the moment many tech-savvy readers have been waiting for: The Economist formally launches its Android app today, giving subscribers full access to the weekly edition on Android devices at no extra cost. If you have already activated your Economist online account (in other words, if you have associated your Economist.com credentials with your print subscription, or if you have a web-only subscription), you can use the same log-in details to access The Economist via the app, which is free to download. If you have an Android device and have not already activated your Economist online account, you can activate it here.

The Android app provides the same immersive reading experience as our iPhone and iPad apps, which we launched last November. Since then those apps have been downloaded more than 2.4m times and are now used on nearly 700,000 unique devices each month.

Each week's issue of The Economist is available to download via these mobile apps from 9pm London time (4pm New York time) on Thursdays. Once downloaded, issues are stored on the device. Every issue is also accompanied by a full audio edition (an optional download), with all articles read by professional newscasters, allowing for easy switching between reading and listening. Non-subscribers have free access to a selection of articles each week, including audio. The Android app runs on all Android phones and small and medium-sized tablets running v2.x. It can be downloaded from the Android Market. Please let us know what you think of it.