The iPhone version of the app is now available from iTunes in the UK and the Android version will follow within the next few weeks.

The main features of the BBC Sport app are explained by the head of Sport Interactive Ben Gallop over on the Sports Editors' Blog.

The new BBC Sport app

To support the amazing summer of sport in 2012 we focused on delivering a great mobile experience for big events including creating the BBC Olympics app which almost two million people in the UK downloaded.

Like the Olympics app, the Sport app is a hybrid app. It contains the same web-based content as the mobile sport website and adds extra features and functionality using native app technology.

The Sport app allows you to create quick links to your favourite sports using the standard native iOS pattern for adding, removing and re-ordering. We deliberately set out to use patterns that users recognise from others apps and we'll continue to do this in the other native features we'll add to the app over the next year or so.

You may notice that some of the links in the app such as the football team pages, stats for other sports and other sport indexes open the old BBC Sport mobile site. The next phase of the app project will update these pages and add this content fully to the app and add football teams to the quick link options.

These updates will be released in the next couple of months. The tutorial screen shown when the app is first downloaded helps explain its key features. This tutorial is always available for reference in the app's Other menu. When updates to the app containing new features are available we'll update the tutorial so that it's clear what is new.

For example we know some Android users were disappointed that the Olympics app wasn't available on larger Android phones and smaller tablets. One of the benefits of building the app around a responsive web product was that it was much easier to build an app that scales to serve larger devices.

As a result the sport app will be available for Android devices with a screen width of seven inches or smaller. We'll also roll it out to the Kindle Fire family too once we've thoroughly tested the app on these devices.

We'll also be adding video to both the iPhone and Android versions of the app in the coming months. The BBC's solution for delivering video to Android devices was recently outlined in a blog post by my colleagues Chris Yanda.

We are developing the app for Apple and Android devices which currently account for approximately 75% of the UK smartphone market. We haven't ruled out developing the app for other platforms but building apps is expensive and as a publicly-funded organisation we have to prioritise the areas where we can reach the most users at the lowest costs.

Users with tablets and other mobile devices will be able to access both the mobile and desktop versions of the BBC Sport website and we will continue to use feedback and usage data to help us prioritise future features and versions.

Over the coming weeks there will be further posts on this blog by key people in the technical and design teams about how they built the app for iPhone and Android devices. Until then we hope you enjoy using this first release of the Sport app and we're keen to hear what other features you'd find useful in future updates.

The BBC Sport app is available for iPhones and iPod touch devices on iOS 5.0 in the UK.

Search for 'BBC Sport' in the iTunes App Store.

Lucie Mclean is the executive product manager for BBC Sport, Future Media.

Back in June I wrote on this blog about work my team in Salford had done to redesign the mobile sport homepage ahead of the summer of sport.

I'm pleased to announce that we've now reworked the most popular sections of the mobile sport website too and have relaunched it on a new url - m.bbc.co.uk/sport.

Hundreds of different mobile phones and tablets visit our mobile and desktop website every day and these in turn have a wide range of screen sizes and resolutions.

The range of devices and their capabilities is constantly changing. You might also have noticed that many of the latest handsets have larger screens than other popular models and there's a growing range of smaller tablet devices too.

The homepage on a variety of devices

Rather than optimise the mobile sport site for one screen size or device type we've built it responsively so that it adapts and displays the content in a way which makes the most of the device's screen size.

This responsive approach is part of a wider product strategy within the BBC to provide the most appropriate experience to users whatever their device is.

On this new responsive mobile sport site all devices get the same range of stories, indexes and sport statistics but the layout changes.

If you've got a large screen we'll show you bigger images, more items in the sport-specific navigation bar and more information about the stories on the indexes. If you've got a smaller screen, we'll show fewer images and make those we do show smaller.

The key point here is that we deliver a single page to all devices which simplifies both the development and testing.

Pages are assembled on our platform using PHP.

The PHP or page assembly layer obtains all the data it needs for the final page by calling several RESTful services (for stats, stories, live event updates) before serving the final, complete page to the audience.

Since we assemble a single page for each request it also means that we become extremely cacheable and can benefit from efficient serving of pages using Varnish and Content Delivery Networks in order to reduce the load on our own servers.

New slide-in menu

This means that during times of heavy load (such as every Saturday afternoon!) we are able to serve millions of page requests efficiently.

We will publish more detail on the underlying technical approach in a future post and include detail on the development and testing process, which is an important part of the work we do.

The index pages for football and other selected major sports (cricket, F1, rugby league, rugby union, tennis and golf) all have this new design. Story pages and live text commentaries have been updated too - with the focus on keeping them easy to read on a mobile device.

The navigation across the mobile site has also been updated. You can now access the main sports plus the national UK sport indexes using the menu which slides in from the right when you select the All Sports button. We're also adding a football live scores page and have redesigned the football fixtures and results too.

The site also features easy access to Radio 5 Live to help you get more great live sport content from across the BBC while you're on the go.

We've got lots more great features to add over the coming months. We still have more pages to update with the new look and feel - including the rest of the sport indexes, football team pages and results pages for other sports. Live and on demand video highlights will also be introduced early next year.

For the millions of users who liked the BBC Olympics app this summer, we'll be following up with the BBC Sport app early in the new year too.

The mobile website user experience was designed by Manchester-based agency magneticNorth and then developed further over the summer using feedback from users about how they used the Olympics mobile website and the desktop sport website.

We hope you enjoy the new features and welcome your feedback on how the site looks and works on your mobile device.

Lucie Mclean is the executive product manager, Sport, BBC Future Media.

BBC Olympics app on Android

Last month I wrote on this blog about the new mobile video services we've developed to help you enjoy the summer of sport - including live and catch-up video on your mobile and tablet.

My team, the mobile sport and 2012 team, has been using your feedback on our Euro 2012, F1 and Wimbledon coverage to continue improving the service, working on the video quality and reliability of playback.

And as we build up to the Olympic Games, I'm excited to be able to announce the release of our next new BBC Sport mobile product - the BBC Olympics smartphone app.

It's available on Android and iPhone, and we are introducing a shortcut for Blackberry devices too.

BBC Future Media's Mobile Platforms team, based alongside us at Mediacity UK in Salford, built the app.

The BBC Olympics app is built on the same content as the Olympic mobile website, including:

• a page for each of the 36 Olympic sports - the perfect place to find out more about the rules or what's happening when
• every athlete and country has their own page with medal tallies, news stories and key facts
• minute-by-minute live text commentary to give you that crucial overview of 36 sports during the live action
• comprehensive schedule and results service to help you stay in touch with all the results as they happen
• most importantly, thousands of hours of live video during the Games plus highlights of the best medal-winning moments

Native app features

We've taken advantage of the extra functionality available in native apps to include some additional features.

In both the iOS and Android versions you can download the latest stories to read offline - perfect for when you're on the go and in an area where there's poor mobile reception.

If you want to manage your data allowance, this can be switched off (say, on 3G), or set to take headlines without images.

The iOS app is designed for iPhones and iPod touch devices on iOS 5.0 and above. Users can personalise the iOS app, by adding their favourite Olympics sports to the customisable tab bar.

The Android app is for handsets with OS 2.2 and above. Android users need to have Flash installed to be able to watch the video.

You can see a demonstration of the app's main features in the video. Some of its content (such as medals, live video and results) won't be available until the Games start but there's plenty of news and information available now.

Please do download the new BBC Olympics app and let me know what you think.

We're working on the BBC Sport app already, and we would love to hear your Olympic feedback as we prepare the BBC Sport product.

Lucie McLean is Senior Product Manager, Mobile Sport & 2012, BBC Future Media

• Find out more about the BBC Sport Olympics app at the Media Centre

A dedicated video index displays the live video available on the BBC Sport mobile website

Hello - I'm Lucie Mclean, senior product manager in BBC Future Media and responsible for BBC Sport services on mobile devices.

During this first full week of Euro 2012 games, we've been testing some exciting new ways to enjoy the football, which I'm delighted to unveil to you all today.

Ahead of England's clash with Sweden tomorrow, you can now watch all the Euro 2012 matches broadcast by the BBC directly on your mobile - live, and on demand, as well as highlights from all games. And that video will be available on 3G and wifi, so you can keep up and catch up with all the action wherever you are.

Video is available in the UK on iPhones and iPod touches with iOS 5.0 and above, on the iPad and on Android devices with OS 2.2 and above.

Audience research shows that users are increasingly looking to the web on the go, getting the content they want when, and where, they want it. Huge numbers of people already enjoy live and demand video on their desktop, at home or office, and text and data services on their mobile. By offering video across mobile devices we aim to give sport fans the complete picture wherever they are.

We have also redesigned the Sport homepage on mobile devices, in part to showcase the new video, but also to bring in line with the BBC Sport website's new-look launched in February.

This new design provides easy access to the latest news, live scores and results plus all the new live and on demand video now available. It has been developed using an approach called 'responsive design', adapting to your mobile phone's screen size and capabilities. Responsive design enables us to efficiently deliver appropriate experiences to the huge (and growing) range of devices. My colleague, Chris Russell, Head of Product for News, explains more about responsive design at the BBC here.

These new features are part of our overall strategy to offer the best BBC Sport content across four screens and ensure audiences never miss a moment of big sporting events.

And Euro 2012 is just the start of a unique summer of Sport on the BBC. We'll be bringing you Wimbledon, F1 (including the British GP from Silverstone), the Open Golf and of course the Olympics, all available live and on demand on your mobile device.

Our mobile Olympics service will include up to 24 live video streams, detailed schedule and results and also access via BBC Sport Olympic apps on iOS and Android.

And post-Games we'll be making further responsive improvements to the Sport mobile site, together with the launch of a BBC Sport app.

Delivering live and on demand video across a range of tablets and mobiles is complicated, and there are instances where we still have a few bugs to iron out. We have taken the decision to get these services out to you now so that they can start to use and enjoy them, but also so we can listen, learn and improve them. Please do send us your thoughts and feedback - it will play a crucial role in how we continue to improve. You can send feedback to mobile@bbc.co.uk or comment below.

Lucie Mclean is Senior Development Producer Product Manager, Mobile Sport and 2012, BBC Future Media (corrected 14 Jun)