The BBC has announced that its iPlayer will land in Windows Phone platform soon
Making the announcement, BCC confirmed that all handsets running Microsoft’s mobile operating system currently cannot access the catch-up TV and radio service and to end this, the corporation said it will have to allow a web-based version of iPlayer to be accessed via a live tile – or square icon – on the Windows Phone home screen despite work going on to complete its Android app.
The head of the iPlayer team; David Price previously said that Android was “complex and fragmented with a huge difference between video playback capabilities” for different devices, causing problems for his developers.
By wrapping the iPlayer mobile website together with its proprietary Media Player plug-in, the broadcaster can offer access to streamed feeds of its material but will still not be able to let users download programmes for offline use – as is the case with its iOS app.
The move comes months after Microsoft agreed to pay the BBC a fee to use some of its online news stories within its Windows 8 desktop Bing Daily news app.
Nokia recently revealed that the Windows Phone Store now hosts more than 130,000 apps.
However, the marketplace still has notable holdouts including Instagram, Photoshop and an official Dropbox app as well as games including Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto and Temple Run.
However, a spokeswoman for BBC Global News said this latter agreement was a “commercial content licensing deal” and completely separate to the iPlayer contract.