Sky Ireland, which has approximately 700,000 television subscribers, has released figures for downloads of its apps on iOS (Apple’s mobile operating system).

The satellite TV company says there have been 318,259 downloads in Ireland of its Sky News app and 144,798 downloads of the Sky Sports News app.

Its Sky Go app, which lets subscribers watch television content on the move, has been downloaded 295,782 times, while there have been 177,326 downloads of the Sky+ app, which allows subscribers to manage their recordings remotely.

That's a total iOS app download figure of more than 1.2 million.

Patchy wifi and mobile connections are prompting customers to download entertainment content in advance of their commute, according to Sky – its subscribers can pre-load Sky content via the Sky Go Extra app, which costs an additional €6 per month.

"More and more often users are using home broadband to download content to mobile devices for later consumption – it's the digital equivalent of a home-packed lunch," says Mark Anderson, director of sales and marketing at Sky Ireland.

“We expect that our digital diet will feature more media meshing as time goes on.”