John Ridding, chief executive of the Financial Times, said that the iPad edition of the pink, specialist newspaper had been downloaded 4,30,000 times since its launch in April.However, only a handful of those downloading the app have opted to pay GBP200-a-year subscription, which applies to anybody wanting to view more than 10 articles a month.Speaking at the Reuters Global Media Summit in London, Mr. Ridding said that the FT was growing its digital-only subscription base at a rate of about 500 a week.
The United States had become the FT’s biggest market in both print and online, with the iPad continuing to drive growth, Mr. Ridding said. The FT has about 1,89,000 digital-only subscribers, some of whom sign up as part of corporate deals where their parent company pays. Of these, about one in 10 have come through the iPad since the app was launched.About 30,000 people have signed up to the GBP200-a-year deal since April, meaning that about 3,000 will have chosen to pay via their iPad. However, the number of actual FT iPad users will be greater as anybody signing up to access news from the FT.com website also gets access to the Apple-based service too.Ridding highlighted the increase in the number of the FT’s corporate sales, as an example of how the newspaper can grow its circulation. He said: “The idea was that we moved away from being disaggregated, going through Factiva and Lexis Nexis and other aggregators, and set up our own direct channel to corporates.”
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