The Times was the first UK national newspaper to climb on board the iPad bandwagon.
It had an app up and running in the iTunes store ready for the iPad UK launch on May 28.
So, how is it doing?
Very well, by the look of things.
The Times app was free for the first month and then charged £9.99 for a month-long subscription to the digital version of the paper.
And subscription figures are now starting to leak out.
It's claimed the iPad app now has 12,500 subscribers. That may not sound a lot, but remember there aren't that many iPads around yet and it's a new way of reading your daily newspaper.
I say claimed, because The Times is saying nothing. The figure comes from a website called Beehive City. And why should we believe Beehive City? Well, it's run by Dan Sabbah, who was Media Editor of The Times until last November. I'm presuming his contacts are good.
A little after the iPad launch in the UK, The Times website went behind a paywall. After a trial period, the website started charging £2 a week.
Beehive City says the number of paying subscribers for the website is now 15,000 - only 10 per cent of it's pre-paywall following.
By anyone's maths that is nowhere near as successful as the iPad app, remembering the huge following the website had when it was free.
It's very early days and we won't really know if people are prepared to subscribe to websites for news until all newspapers go down that road. But this could be an indicator for the future. Digital reading will work if it's provided on a portable and easily accessible hardware platform.
It had an app up and running in the iTunes store ready for the iPad UK launch on May 28.So, how is it doing?
Very well, by the look of things.
The Times app was free for the first month and then charged £9.99 for a month-long subscription to the digital version of the paper.
And subscription figures are now starting to leak out.
It's claimed the iPad app now has 12,500 subscribers. That may not sound a lot, but remember there aren't that many iPads around yet and it's a new way of reading your daily newspaper.
I say claimed, because The Times is saying nothing. The figure comes from a website called Beehive City. And why should we believe Beehive City? Well, it's run by Dan Sabbah, who was Media Editor of The Times until last November. I'm presuming his contacts are good.
A little after the iPad launch in the UK, The Times website went behind a paywall. After a trial period, the website started charging £2 a week.
Beehive City says the number of paying subscribers for the website is now 15,000 - only 10 per cent of it's pre-paywall following.
By anyone's maths that is nowhere near as successful as the iPad app, remembering the huge following the website had when it was free.
It's very early days and we won't really know if people are prepared to subscribe to websites for news until all newspapers go down that road. But this could be an indicator for the future. Digital reading will work if it's provided on a portable and easily accessible hardware platform.
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