• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 18, 2020

At least in the United States, Apple News continues to establish itself as a go-to information resource for mobile users.

Over the past four years, the share of U.S. iPhone users relying on the service on a weekly basis has increased from 14% to 29%, according to a study conducted by YouGov for The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Across all mobile platforms, the share of U.S. consumers relying on Apple News at the beginning of the year was a more modest 11%.

This was second behind Google News, which was used by 17% of U.S. consumers at the beginning of the year.

Across the major global markets in which YouGov surveyed consumers, it found that only 7% were relying on Apple News on a weekly basis earlier in the year.

Again, this was second to Google News, which was used by 23% of mobile users in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Spain, and Japan.

Complicating Apple’s attempts to scale its Apple News audience around the world, the European Commission just announced separate antitrust probes into the business practices of Apple’s App Store and Apple Pay.

Separately, YouGov found that publishers are relying more heavily on mobile alerts to stay connected to consumers. Since 2015, the share of U.S. consumers who received such alerts on a weekly basis increased from 13% to 22%.

Worldwide, consumers’ dependence on smartphones only continues to grow, YouGov found.

In fact, 69% of people surveyed across 40 countries reported using their smartphones to access news on a weekly basis at the beginning of the year.

These devices also appear to be encouraging the growth of shorter video content via third-party platforms as well as audio content like podcasts.

Stateside, the share of consumers relying on their smartphones to access news in a weekly basis increased from 30% in 2013 to 58% at the beginning of 2020.

Across countries, meanwhile, 48% of respondents reported using two or more devices to access news each week, which was up from 39% in 2014.

Computers and laptops remain important for many, yet the convenience and versatility of the smartphone continues to win out, the researchers found.

In the U.K., for one, the smartphone overtook the computer in 2017 and is now used by around two-thirds of the researcher’s sample.