Samsung and Springer: New partners in mobile media

A new joint venture had been announced Tuesday between Bild tabloid publisher Axel Springer and Korean electronics group Samsung, for mobile media including news.

The collaboration between the said two companies will produce digital media which is exclusive for Samsung customers that will begin with a news platform in Germany and Poland which will be rolled out next year in other European markets.

Springer which is a newspaper publisher that owns several publications in Poland and two-thirds of its sales and three-quarters of its core profit came from digital offerings.

The created new stories will be packaged in an app called Upday and will be divided into two sections namely; "Need to Know" and "Want to Know".  Need to Know will showcase short articles written by a dedicated Springer editorial team  Want to Know on the other hand will showcase algorithmically curated content from partner publishers, linking the publishers' sites.

It was J.K. Shin, president of Samsung's IT & Mobile Communications business who signed the deal on Tuesday with Axel Springer CEO Matthias Dopfner  while the app launches Thursday in Poland and Germany having contents both in Polish and German.

Sandra Petersen who is the Axel Springer spokeswoman said that new editorial teams will be built in every European country the collaboration spreads to in the future.  Upday presently has 50 employees, having one-third on the editorial operation.

Since Upday is not pre-stalled on Samsung phones, users will have to download it via the Google app store.  This is where the twist sets in because Dopfner is the most vocal critic of Google's  market dominance on entire Europe. 

He opposes its policy of displaying snippets from several large German newspapers without any payment for the right to post them.  Google once said that it directs large volumes of readers, adding dollars to new sites.

 Monica Monforte, Samsung spokeswoman said that  the company had submitted the Upday app to Google Play and was accepted without any specific negotiation.

Samsung phones are best-selling models in the German and French markets according to eMarketer.  Apple iOS grows continually in Europe's five largest countries reaching a 20.3% market share by Q1 of 2015 in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain which is according to ComTech. 

The collaboration with Axel Springer  is good for Samsung as it provides the device maker with content to make customers excited and delighted.

It would be another step  in the digital direction for Axel Springer and finds itself under pressure from free content offered by Internet rivals  which  badly affects print publications.