I’m James Simcock, executive producer for mobile in BBC Radio and assisting as product owner in the build team for BBC iPlayer Radio on mobile devices. Together with Chris Kimber, the executive product manager for BBC iPlayer Radio (across platforms) and the mobile development team in Salford, I’m excited to announce the launch of BBC iPlayer Radio for Android. This app has all the features of the iOS app as well as some improvements that, as an Android user myself, I think make it even better.

For the very first time this app is now also available on tablets including the very popular Amazon Kindle Fire HD. You can download the app from the Google Play store now and it will be available shortly in the Amazon app store.

What you’ll find in the app The BBC iPlayer Radio app transforms your access to BBC radio programmes. With the app you can wake up with your favourite breakfast show and instantly find the breadth of BBC Radio at your fingertips. Specific features include the ability to: Set the alarm and wake up with your favourite DJ or programme.

Spin through the touchscreen dial and listen live to the whole range of BBC Radio stations.

Swipe to reveal on-demand catch-up content and videos on every station page.

Set programme reminders to ensure you never miss favourite shows and add tracks to favourites.

Easily discover what tracks are playing and share with friends.

The app surfaces a wide range of content including the BBC’s wealth of radio shows to watch and listen to live or via catch-up, wherever you are. There are also hundreds of podcasts, on-demand programmes from the past seven days and video clips from music sessions, events, gigs, festivals and your favourite DJs. We hope you enjoy all the content the app includes and we will be introducing more content and features to BBC iPlayer Radio over the year ahead. This includes the ability to access full on-demand programmes from English local radio or the Nations stations.

BBC Radio iPlayer app on mobile and tablet devices

Bringing iPlayer Radio to Android devices Since Adobe Flash is no longer available on Android devices we decided to launch the new Android app with a new range of audio streams that use the ‘HLS’ protocol (HTTP Live Streaming). This protocol works really well on Android devices operating on version 4.0 or above (Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean and beyond). Looking at the stats I can see that the majority of Android devices currently visiting iPlayer Radio via a browser are running more recent versions of the software and Google’s own app store data backs this up. On average around 80% of installs of current BBC products are on Ice Cream Sandwich (version 4.0) and above. Using HLS has a number of benefits including the ability to efficiently access high quality live and on-demand audio whilst allowing you to continue to use other apps on your device at the same time, and allows us to develop exciting new features in the future.

Building the new Android app Since we launched the new BBC iPlayer Radio in October last year we have been learning more about how audiences use the product. With this in mind we’ve followed a slightly different design pattern for the Android version of the app which not only leans heavily into the navigational paradigms of the platform (making it familiar to most Android users) but also makes it quicker than ever to discover more content offered by most of our radio stations. On iOS some content is tucked beneath the ‘currently-playing content’ area on the screen, revealed by swiping upwards to show a ‘carousel’. However, on Android simply swiping horizontally will take you through all the content from the currently selected station.

Video clips and featured content