Bible Brands Give Away 1 Million NIV Digital Bibles

Even as the King James Bible celebrates its 400th year, three well-known Bible brands are gearing up to get a more modern version into the hands of believers—digitally.

YouVersion’s Bible App, Biblica and Zondervan are teaming up to offer 1 million free downloads of the New International Version (NIV) Bible beginning Feb. 12.

“The NIV continues in the tradition of the King James Version by bringing God’s unchanging Word into the language of the people. Our goal at Zondervan is to see ‘more people engaging the Bible more,’ and YouVersion’s Bible App helps accomplish this purpose,” says Chip Brown, senior vice president and publisher at Zondervan. “It is an outstanding resource available on nearly every mobile device on the market, and that makes accessing God’s Word as easy as making a phone call.”

Starting Saturday, Feb. 12 at 8:00 p.m. EST, the popular NIV will be available for download through the Bible App for 400 hours. Once downloaded, you can access the NIV anytime, anywhere whether you are connected to the Internet or not. The free downloads will end at noon EST on March 1.

Users logged 4.3 billion minutes reading the Bible in 2010 with the Bible App and are currently on track to log 1 billion minutes in the first 50 days of 2011. As of the beginning of January 2011, the Bible App had been installed on slightly more than 13 million unique devices. On Jan. 19, the YouVersion Bible App was listed by Apple as one of the all-time top apps for both iPad and iPhone.