Credit for the first Malayalam news app goes to Manorama

The combo image shows a person accessing the Malayala Manorama mobile app on his Nokia phone. File Photo: Onmanorama

Gone are the days when a mobile phone was just a gadget to make and receive calls. The mobile phones of the day are much more than a phone - with a press it can become a TV screen, a computer, a radio, a shopping website, a bank or a newspaper. A mobile phone will take only second to complete all these transitions, all thanks to apps or mobile applications which you can download on to your phone.

There are a lot of mobile applications that do a whole lot of things for the user — it could be for a task as simple as calling a taxi to getting in touch with one's friends without wasting mobile currency.

The combo image shows a person accessing nation section news in Malayala Manorama mobile app on his Nokia phone. File Photo: Onmanorama

Newspapers, magazines, TV channels, radios, all of them have mobile apps these days. A reader can even read Malayalam news with these apps — the credit for the first news app in Malayalam belongs to Malayala Manorama. On 4 July, 2007, Malayala Manorama in association with Nokia launched the first mobile app. Those days it was called On Demand Portal (ODP). Launched on the Symbian Operating System, the Malayala Manorama app was the first in a regional language. Later, Nokia launched other language apps too.

Now, Malayala Manorama app is one of the most popular apps in India. The app is available on all platforms - iPhone, iPad Android, Windows, Kindle, BlackBerry. And these apps have more than 20lakh downloads. The app is available on tablets too. Manorama and Manorama News TV app are in the Top 15 app slots on Google Playstore.