The Challenge
The core challenge was to modernize the brand for people of all ages in Germany, with a specific strategic focus on lowering the average viewer age and making the tagesschau app suitable for every user. To succeed in a market dominated by the "social media scroll", the tagesschau app needed to go from traditional landscape broadcasting to a disruptive, vertical-first mobile strategy without compromising its journalistic integrity.
Solution and Implementation
Engineering the future of mobile journalism through AI and agile technology.
Concept, Design and Strategy
Extensive user testing resulted in a "mobile-first" UI that prioritized speed and accessibility for the tagesschau app. By introducing a curated "Top News" area specifically for vertical video, we transformed the habit of checking the news into a seamless, tactile experience.
Mobile Engineering (iOS, Android & Wearables)
Using adaptive methodologies, we built native applications for iOS, Android (including Android Automotive), and Huawei. The tagesschau app architecture was designed to handle massive scale—up to 10 million monthly active users—while ensuring high performance for live streams and push notifications (Premium and Breaking News).
Technical Innovation: Pictacrop Integration
To solve the landscape-to-portrait dilemma, we implemented Pictacrop. The tool uses AI to identify relevant visual subjects, allowing editors to highly automate generating vertical clips. This enabled cinematic features within the tagesschau app, such as automated camera pans, ensuring the video always felt natively "shot for mobile."
Results
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5 Mio +
DOWNLOADS
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4.5
APPSTORE RATING
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5x
MORE PAGE IMPRESSIONS
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#1
IN CATEGORY NEWS AFTER RELEASE
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100%
INCREASE OF SESSION DURATION
Appsfactory
Our Expertise
Appsfactory is more than a developer - we’re a strategic innovation partner. Our ability to navigate the complex editorial requirements of a public broadcaster, combined with our proprietary AI implementation in vertical video cropping and deep expertise in high-load backend systems, allowed us to deliver a product that is both technologically sophisticated and culturally significant.