In the December 2021 stats, Apple News has 13.2 million users, or more than a quarter of UK internet users, beating BBC News in terms of overall user base numbers, but not browsing time. New figures from the UK’s Press Gazette say that in December 2021, 27% of all internet users over the age of 15 used the Apple News app. On average, each person spent 93 minutes using it per month, for a total of 1.2 billion minutes.
By contrast, the second-largest news app in the UK is the BBC News app, which accounts for 25.2% of all internet users over the age of 15, but it also has 2.2 billion minutes of total reading time. The rest of the chart includes NewsTag, the third-ranked news aggregator, and Upday, the fifth-ranked.
In the UK, better-known names include Sky News, which came in fourth with 3.3 million subscribers. The Guardian came in sixth with 2.1 million, while the controversial tabloid The Sun app came in 15th with 300,000. Among Apple’s often considered competitors, Google News came in at No. 8 with 1.6 million users, while Microsoft Start didn’t make the list at all.
The Press-Gazette data comes in part from a survey of 10,000 users who agreed to “install statistical meters on 25,000 personal devices” to measure website and app usage. Although website usage is mentioned, this statistic appears to be specific to news app usage, and it does not appear to count users accessing such services through a browser on a phone or tablet.
BBC News has a full news site, while Apple News’ site is just for the app and Apple News+ subscribers.