Print editions pitched at a captive commuter audience are set to be supplemented – and perhaps supplanted – by tablet versions.

In the UK capital’s competitive market, the London Evening Standard is the latest to launch an iPad app, setting it against Associated Newspapers’ Metro edition.

A feed-driven tablet app will enable the London Evening Standard to publish several editions a day. Technology behind the app – which competes with Metro’s two-a-day tablet edition comes from UK developer PageSuite, which introduced the feed-driven software at the World Publishing Expo last month. Optimised templates are produced for mobile and tablet devices, as well as a PDF of the daily newspaper.

The feed-driven ‘live app’ concept means publishing multiple requires minimal resources, thanks to its automated setup. Selected editorial content is delivered into optimised editions in a streamlined workflow. Templates can then be individually crafted and tailored for specific devices before being scheduled to process.

Downloadable from Apple’s Newsstand, the free complements the print edition and an existing website, and will enable more up-to-date news to be delivered at key points throughout the day. It includes a replica edition, archive and supplements, with interstitial ads, plus leaderboard and MPU slots, enabling the UK commuter daily to monetise content and generate digital revenue.

Zach Leonard, digital managing director at The Independent, i and London Evening Standard says the ambition is to directly respond to consumer and advertiser needs for an app which is easy to use, interact with and buy. “This is evidence of our ongoing commitment to digital innovation and to meeting our readers’ needs,” he says. “These apps allow consumers to read our products in the way they want to, and make it easy for advertisers to reach them in new, engaging ways, allowing us to deliver the best journalism to our subscribers and quality cross-platform and cross-title commercial opportunities for brands.”

At London’s Metro – one of the few editions not published by the Scandinavian parent – head of tablet editions James Cadman says the free iPad app provides an opportunity to reach commuters “such as cyclists”, who do not have access to the print edition. But it’s not clear when they will have time to read it.

Launched in 2011, the Metro app is now being supplemented by an afternoon edition.

The print edition has a circulation of 1.3 million copies a day, making it the third-largest daily in the UK and the world’s largest free.

Cadman says the digital edition presents the newspaper “redesigned and repurposed” but still with the look of a print edition and an emphasis on picture quality. It currently downloads overnight via Apple’s App Store.

Created by a team of seven people producing 90-100 screens a day, the app has scored a million downloads and currently has 400,000 subscribers.

AppStudio software (now part of Quark) is used as a plug-in to Adobe’s InDesign, and Cadman says restrictions and the commission taken by Apple are bot an issue: “They get 30 per cent of nothing,” he says.

Best of all, it’s creating a new revenue stream for the publisher – best known for its Daily Mail and Mail Online products.

The “very designed” experience is popular with advertisers, and has eight per cent of the brand’s digital audience, “but is taking 38 per cent of the digital revenue,” Cadman says. Features include a live news page, tailored push notifications, but the hardest part of the project has been to make using a habit in the same way that collecting the print edition is.