So, I'm delighted to announce that from today the BBC News app will be available to download from Android Market in the UK. BBC Worldwide will soon be launching an international version of the app for audiences around the world.

At Mobile World Congress this year, BBC Director of Future Media Ralph Rivera reiterated our ongoing commitment to repurpose core, distinctive BBC Online services for a range of mobile devices. The BBC News app was launched on iPhone and iPad in the UK last July and has proved hugely popular, with nearly 3 million UK downloads and a further 3 million internationally to date. Its arrival within Android Market brings immediate access to breaking news and broadcast content to a wider 'on-the-move' audience.

An increasing proportion of our audiences now access BBC News via mobile devices. This trend isn't new - licence-fee payers have been able to access BBC News on mobile phones through their browsers for around nine years - but it's increasing. We have responded by delivering BBC News Online to devices via apps to ensure a simple, intuitive user experience, with opportunities for personalisation.

The app achieved around 57,000 downloads in the week commencing 2 May driven by the Osama Bin Laden story - a clear testimony to audiences' appetite for a higher quality, on-the-move experience. And, the app is a trusted bookmark during moments of national and international significance, attracting a record 540,000 UK users around the Bin Laden story, and 376,000 UK users on the day of the Royal Wedding.

The BBC News app on Android delivers UK and international news, business, politics, health, education, science and environment, technology and entertainment stories, as well as correspondent features and analysis to your device. The BBC News app on Android is available free of charge.

Key features of the BBC News app on Android are:

• Simple design with scroll functionality to enable efficient browsing;
• Tap action to reveal full-screen article and in-story video;
• Sideways 'swipe' functionality to move between stories;
• Sharing tools to post stories to a range of social networks, email or send via SMS to a friend;
• Rapid news stories refresh and latest and breaking news 'ticker';
• Neat personalisation features, allowing you to personalise the home screen by adding and removing categories;
• Font controls to increase or decrease the story text size.

The BBC News Android app is available on all Android phones and tablets running software versions 1.6 and above, but we're not yet supporting Honeycomb tablets (Android software version 3.0). The app's video experience is accessible to both Flash and non-Flash enabled devices, over wi-fi and 3G connections. In-story video is supported on Android devices versions 1.6 and above, and live streaming of the BBC News channel is possible on versions 2.2 and above which run Flash.

As the range of devices in the market widens, we plan to offer an optimised BBC News experience to the widest mobile audience possible. With this in mind, we'll be working with manufacturers to look at ways of reversioning the service in the most efficient way. We'll also be working hard on improving the experience across our mobile services.

In the meantime, I'd like to hear your feedback on the BBC News app on Android. We've started to use the #bbcapps hash tag on Twitter this morning so join the conversation there, or post a comment below this blog post now.

Anthony Sullivan is Executive Product Manager for News, BBC Future Media

I appreciate that the mobile version does not offer the same full range of content but that is something we will be working on in the coming months.

I referred to a new suite of tools which we hope to make available in the summer. These should allow you to easily select a simplified version of the News site - much like low graphics - whatever we have on the full web version should also be available there too.

In my first post I referred to the changes we are making to the News site. This includes a new design but also significant technical changes that amongst other things will produce fully compliant HTML and CSS.  For those of you who use a text browser, you will get a much better experience than you have had in the past.

The changes will also support enhancements to our mobile output. Whereas now we offer a service that has to work across the range of mobile devices, in future we will be providing a richer array of services that better suite the varying capabilities of device. That will include the volume of news content.

Given these other changes that are making, we made the decision to close low graphics because we felt these other improvements would meet the same needs of our audience. Ideally we would have had these in place first but unfortunately that was not possible as we were reengineering the system that provided that version.

These changes will roll-out over the next few months and include a redesign of the site and a re-engineering of the supporting technical systems. We'll be sharing the details on these changes in this blog in the coming weeks.

The first set of changes we are making will see us upgrading the News Website story HTML to use CSS layout instead of table-based layout. The appearance will be the same. The new HTML will be lighter-weight and more accessible. At the same time we will cease to publish the low graphics version of both the News and Sport websites. These versions are scheduled to be switched off on 6 April.

The low graphics version of the site was designed as a low bandwidth alternative to the full website at a time when most users of the site were using slow dial-up connections. Now, most of our users are on much faster broadband connections and as a result, the percentage of users of this service has steadily declined to a current level around 2%.

The reason to close the low graphics is not simply based on the percentage of users but because we are making a wider set of improvements that meet most of the needs of people currently using this version.

We know that there are some users who are accessing the site on slow connections or via a mobile device. For those users we are providing a clearer link to the mobile version of the site. This site shares many of the characteristics of the low graphics site in that the pages are simplified and have a much lower page weight than the full web site.

As Erik Huggers, Director of Future Media and Technology recently explained, we are also working on improving our range of mobile services beginning with an application for the iPhone followed by services for other platforms.

For users of the Sports site, using the mobile version has the additional benefit in that it provides a much richer service around live coverage and statistics than the current low graphics site.

We know that another major reason why people use the low graphics version is that it is simpler to read. For people with reading difficulties this is very important. The mobile site alternative we will now be offering provides a similarly simplified presentation.

And as mentioned above, at the same time that we are turning off low graphics, we will be upgrading the HTML of News story pages to a much improved CSS layout. The News front page and other section pages will be following soon after alongside a redesign of their layout and the Sport site will be similarly updated later this year.

This summer, we are also expecting to roll out a suite of accessibility tools. These are designed to provide much better support to a range of users - especially those with Lo-vision, Asperger's, Dyslexia, ADHD, or those who find text hard to read. For those who have been using low graphics as a more accessible version, these new tools will provide a much better service. You can find out more about it over on the Ouch website.

We're also aware that some enterprising developers have built services off the low graphics output. For people interested in building on our content, visit BBC Backstage for more information on BBC feeds and APIs.

What about old content?

At the same time as these changes we are also switching off our legacy PDA site and Avantgo services. These predate our browser mobile service and the URLs for those services will be redirected to the mobile site.

Anthony Sullivan is Executive product manager, BBC news website.