The Finnish edition of Donald Duck, Aku Ankka, is about to enter the digital age. Due to launch in August, Aku Ankka Lataamo (Donald Duck Download Central) will complement the weekly print edition of Aku Ankka that appears every Wednesday and enable readers to continue reading similar storylines online. Thanks to its comprehensive search function, the new service will also enable readers to explore stories going back to the very beginning of the history of Aku Ankka in Finland in 1951.“Finland is the world’s leading country in all things Donald Duck and we are proud to be able to offer our hundreds of thousands of fans here a new service that is not available anywhere else,” says Anu Nissinen, CEO of Sanoma Media Finland. “The new types of services that we are creating like this are giving Finns the opportunity to enjoy great content whenever and wherever they want. Our digital services are making our media brands an even more integral part of our customers’ day-to-day lives and increasing their overall reach.”Users of the new service will be able to browse stories by character, period, or illustrator, read entire magazines a year at a time, or explore different themes or particular genre, such as holiday stories or stories set in exotic locales. The search engine behind Aku Ankka Lataamo extends to every piece of dialogue ever published, as well as all the background details on each issue.“Aku Ankka Lataamo will be perfect for all of our readers, whatever their age, preferences, or areas of interest,” says Aku Ankka’s Editor-in-Chief, Aki Hyyppä. “It will also offer a more social reading experience. Users will be able to rate individual stories and add them to their lists of favourites, and share their favourites with other Aku Ankka fans. But best of all, it will enable readers simply to enjoy more of the world’s best comics!”Making more of comics onlineAccording to the Yippee 2013 survey (TNS Gallup, 02/2013), nearly three-quarters of children and young people in Finland today read a comic at least once a month. Aku Ankka is still the country’s most popular comic and is read by nearly half of young people aged between three and 16. Comics are also popular with adults, and comic strips continue to be a popular feature of many daily papers.The popularity of smartphones and tablets among children and young people has exploded over the last couple of years and over half of school-age children today have a smartphone and 10% have a tablet (Yippee, TNS Gallup 2013).“By launching Aku Ankka Lataamo, we want to meet the needs and expectations of this audience, both today and into the future. The service will make both Donald Duck’s latest adventures and his age-old classic stories available to everyone, and make it easy to access thousands of stories wherever you are,” says Aki Hyyppä.Aku Ankka Lataamo in a nutshell
  • The service will be available via browsers on desktops and laptops and via an iOS app on iPads.
  • Users will not always need to be online to access content, as the app can download 20 stories to read offline.
  • Subscribers to the print edition of Aku Ankka will be able to access Aku Ankka Lataamo for €4.90 a month. Other subscribers will be charged €9.90 a month. During the launch, subscriptions will vary from three to five months.
Further information:Aki Hyyppä, Editor-in-Chief, Aku Ankka, Sanoma Magazines Finland, tel. +358 (0)9 1201, aki.hyyppa@sanoma.fiDonald Duck appeared for the first time in a short released in 1934. He soon began to feature in cartoon strips and got his own magazine in the 1940s. The Finnish edition, Aku Ankka, appeared for the first time in December 1951. The circulation of the magazine quadrupled during the first five years and today Aku Ankka has a circulation of 282,794 (LT 2012) and around 1.2 million readers a week. Aku Ankka is part of the portfolio of Finland’s leading magazine publisher, Sanoma Magazines Finland. www.sanomamagzines.fiSanoma Magazines is part of Sanoma. Sanoma is a European forerunner in consumer media and learning.