• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, July 3, 2017

According to PacketZoom, their News App Performance Index ranks leading News & Media apps based on their speed and performance. According to the index, TopBuzz, BBC News, FOX News and NBC News were the fastest apps among those analyzed, with The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Huffington Post apps ranking among the slowest.

Shlomi Gian, CEO of PacketZoom, says that “Today's consumers crave instant information, so it is especially important for News and Media apps to optimize their performance. Even with the proliferation of 4G networks, mobile apps have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to speed and reliability. The bottom line is that no matter how strong the mobile network is, your app can do better over the ‘last mobile mile.’”

The study looked at how quickly content loaded on each app’s home (landing) screen, and how long it took before the consumer was able to begin reading content. TopBuzz had the fastest app, with a time-to-read period of 3.1 seconds. BBC News, FOX News and NBC News came in at 3.7, 4.4 and 4.5 seconds, respectively.

Apps from The Wall Street Journal (7.1 seconds), The New York Times (6.3 seconds) and Huffington Post (6.1 seconds) were much slower than average. Studies from Dynatrace and Google have shown that consumers expect mobile apps or web pages to download completely in four seconds or less. 

The News App Performance Index also analyzed the total file size and the average file size of the major News apps, as they are two important factors in determining an app’s performance. However, a small file size didn’t always have a direct correlation to fast app performance, as network conditions also play a large factor.

The study found that even the fastest apps had room for an increase of up to 1.6x or more in their time-to-read performance by integrating in-app mobile networking technology.

 Key Findings from PacketZoom’s Mobile App News Performance Index:

• TopBuzz is leading the pack with the fastest time-to-read, due to utilization of small file size (58 KB)
• All apps but TopBuzz and BBC News failed to load faster than 4 seconds, which, from a Dynatrace study, could result in user frustration and abandonment of mobile apps
• The Wall Street Journal app is ranked low with slow download times due to its large file size usage. In fact, the WSJ app has a total file size of 4608 KB, compared with TopBuzz, which is only 58 KB
• CNN is ranked lower than Reuters despite a small average file size utilization. This is attributed to a higher number of assets on the main screen, resulting in a higher total file size for CNN versus Reuters

 For additional information from PacketZoom, please visit here.