This month, The Associated Press celebrates the one-year anniversary of AP Mobile and the fact that more than 55 million local stories have been read on it during that time frame.

The AP Mobile team claims to have also been the first to create an iPhone mobile news application, which made its debut during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote address at the 2008 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.

"We've seen nothing but growth in readership of local news and the demand and time spent is going up as well," said Jeff Litvack, general manager of mobile and emerging products at AP, New York.

"We have also seen the publishing industry embracing AP Mobile since we launched with just 107 members and now we have more than 1,000," he said. "Mobile news is very relevant and extremely sticky across all age groups but mostly 18-34 year-old higher-income people."

AP Mobile is an award-winning multimedia news portal developed by The Associated Press that provides anytime access to international, national and local news.

Designed specifically for smartphones, AP Mobile provides a gateway to a wide variety of news content and mobile-specific functionalities including search, viral sharing, content ratings and text alerts, as well as customizable location settings and homepage categories.

On average, AP Mobile users spend 17 minutes per month interacting with AP mobile applications and the site at http://www.apnews.com.

More than 50 percent of AP Mobile news accessed are Top Stories, followed by Local News (21 percent), Entertainment (9 percent) and Sports (7 percent).

IPhone and BlackBerry users both average 7 page views per visit to AP Mobile.

AP Mobile users access news consistently throughout week -- just as much during the first half of the week, including Sunday.

AP Mobile is ad-supported.

"I think you have to have an audience and then advertisers will be interested in becoming part of the ecosystem," Mr. Litvack said. "It is still very early for mobile advertising, but the ability to track is getting better and we are going to see more and more adoption, trials and experiments as part of campaigns.

"I think one of the exciting things is the relevancy of local and mobile," he said. "Give me things on the go and what's most relevant to me. Users really get it. They want to see what's happening around them."