Magazines increasingly turning to Polar Mobile to launch mobile apps

Recently there's been some attention paid to one of the ascendant players in the mobile app revolution as it relates to magazines. Polar Mobile is a Canadian company founded in Waterloo in 2007 and now based in Toronto that has more than 1,000 apps with 9 million subscribers on behalf of 300 customers -- including some of the largest magazine publishers -- in 10 countries.

Last week it entered into the largest mobile deal in Canadian history to launch over 500 mobile apps for the local newspapers of Torstar's Metroland Media. It recently partnered with such diverse clients as TVO, the NFL Players and Major League Baseball Players associations and in March estimated it would be launching 100 apps for Research in Motion's PlayBook.

Polar's reputation is for creating mobile content solutions for better-known media brands, ones that work across all major smartphone devices (Apple, Blackberry, Android, Windows Phone, Samsung). Among the titles with which it is or has worked are Canadian Living, Elle and Hockey News from Transcontinental Media, Maclean's, Marketing and Canadian Business from Rogers and big U.S. titles such as TIME, Sports Illustrated, Wired, Variety, CBS Sports, Crain's, CNNMoney and Advertising Age.