FT targets readers with subscription app

The Financial Times has launched a subscription-based mobile app product to reach readers outside of its U.K. home base and offer a lower-priced option to convert them into paying subscribers, reports Sara Guaglione.

Guaglione reports, “Called the FT Digital Edition, the standalone subscription initially launched in 2020 on desktop as a digital version of the FT’s print newspaper and weekly magazine. It now has 12,000 subscribers in the U.S., according to Nicola Halstead, the FT’s director of print subscriptions and digital editions. The mobile app version went live last week, and she declined to share how much the product overall has grown in the past year.

“About 55% of Digital Edition subscribers and 40% of FT Edit monthly users are now based in the U.S., according to Halstead. The FT has 1.3 million print and digital subscriptions, the same number as earlier this year. The FT declined to share how many digital subscribers it has now — but the FT had 1 million in March. Halstead said about 20% of the FT’s subscribers are based in the U.S. — the same share the FT told Digiday in March, when it had 1.3 million global paid subscribers.

“The FT Digital Edition app is a way to serve readers who are difficult to reach with the physical newspaper, Halstead said.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.