Read-it-later apps as the name implies lets you save articles and videos to read/view later on your own time. Pocket, one of the more prominent players in the space, debuted a new paid premium service of its bookmarking app earlier this week which generated some chatter about the space. Pocket, of course, isn’t the only firm competing to build to ‘DVR for the Internet’. Their most notable competitor is Instapaper which was founded by Marco Arment and which is now owned by Betaworks. Instapaper also offers a a paid read-it-later solution.
Below, we analyze Pocket’s app store performance versus competing read-it-later apps.
As the chart below highlights, Pocket has maintained a firm lead over both Instapaper and reading platform Readability in the App Store ‘News’ category and consistently trended in the top 30 apps in the category. Interestingly, Instapaper saw a huge jump in mid-December after going free the week of Dec. 19 as part of Apple’s ‘App of the Week’ program. Readability saw a ranking jump in January after releasing a big app update but failed to sustain the momentum.
San Francisco-based Pocket is backed by $7.5M from investors including Google Ventures, Foundation Capital and Baseline Ventures and last raised funding 22 months ago so the performance of its premium plan will be one to watch in coming months.
