The new BBC iPlayer app for the iPad was downloaded 54,511 times in the 24 hours following its release in the Apple iTunes App Store last Thursday (February 10).
Having downloaded the app, 55% of all programme requests from the iPad that day came from the new iPlayer app, while its Android equivalent pulled in 50% of all programme requests from Android devices.
Between Wednesday February 9 and Thursday February 10, iPad and Android requests grew by 111% and 228% respectively.
News of the apps’ arrival leaked out earlier than had been planned after a BBC engineer released details through his Twitter account, though ultimately gaining the apps additional publicity. As is typically the case there has been no publicity of the new devices on the BBC itself, just the regular calls to action to use the iPlayer, without actually mentioning how this can be achieved.
The number of downloads capped an already successful January for the iPlayer that recorded a total of 162 million requests as more records were broken. For once Top Gear was knocked off the number one position for the most requested programme. Its place was taken by Come Fly with Me, the Airline-style fly-on-the-wall spoof from Little Britain stars Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Five episodes occupied the first five positions.
Overall the number of requests grew across all major devices, though online was ahead of the pack with a new all-time high figure of 101.3m TV content requests.
