The irishtimes.com news app for the iPhone was launched this weekend, and sits atop the Irish bestsellers in the App Store as I write. Interesting reactions, from the ‘handy, easy and quick’ to ‘pointless and disappointing’.

Most of the more negative comments focus on the fact that you don’t get the full content of the newspaper for your 159 cents. However, you do get all breaking Irish, international, business and sport news throughout the day, along with selected content from The Irish Times. For that price (less than, a single issue of the paper, after all), I reckon it’s a pretty good package. I’ve been using the test version over the last couple of weeks, and finding it very useful.

Remember, this is not the be-all and end-all of our app strategy – expect another announcement very soon – it’s the first stage in a process which I expect will continue in lots of interesting ways over the next while.

In the meantime, I’d be very interested to hear what users think.