Category: Mobility

UK’s Times sold 5,000, FT shifted 130,000, WSJ 10,000 subs

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Not bad for a few days’ work, and could be a relatively nice earner…

But whether significant numbers of iPad users will renew the £9.99 subscription each month, after that first-week flurry of app excitement, remains to be seen.

Also at D8, Murdoch said his Wall Street Journal app now has 10,000 customers, paying $17.29 a month or free to those already subscribed to the website/newspaper.

Yesterday, Financial Times product development manager Steven Pinches told a separate conference the FT has seen 130,000 downloads of its free-to-download iPad app since it was made available to the device in the U.S. two weeks back (via Mobile Entertainment).

What we don’t know – whether the app is actually enticing iPad users to subscribe to the FT for the first time. Unlike the Times, the FT’s app is free for two months thanks to a sponsorship deal, but will then offer access only to readers who pay the title’s platform-agnostic annual subscription.

The Guardian Eyewitness photography app, from our parent company Guardian News & Media, has seen 90,000 downloads since iPad’s US launch, free under a Canon sponsorship.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/jun/03/ipad-newspapers

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Making Sense of Your iPad Options with New AT&T Data Plans

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You can still turn the 3G data connectivity on or off with a click or two from the iPad, making the 3G version of the iPad a more versatile option for business professionals that might need to get access to critical resources in a pinch when no wi-fi network is available.

The good news is that customers already subscribed to the unlimited data plan are grandfathered and can continue using the unlimited plan as long as they choose. You can use the AT&T Data Calculator to try and estimate the amount of data you expect to consume on a monthly basis and choose the plan that makes the most sense. Existing customers who have already been using the 3G connectivity of the iPad should be able to view the data usage history online, or at least get that information by contacting AT&T.

If you are a Sprint wireless customer and you have a Palm Pre or the new HTC EVO, then you already have in your hand a device capable of creating its own personal hotspot that can connect a handful of devices and share out the wireless connection. The device is $270 full price, but like a smartphone you can get it at a significantly lower, subsidized price if you are willing to accept a two-year contract. Whether you enter into a contract or not, the service is $60 per month for 5Gb of monthly data capacity from both carriers (although Sprint also includes unlimited data over 4G where that network is available).

There is an undocumented feature of Windows 7 that allows you to turn a laptop into a portable hotspot as well. However, when you get to the point where you are carrying your Windows 7 laptop so you can access the Internet from your iPad, I think you have crossed some sort of line in terms of practicality.

There have been leaks and rumors suggesting that the new iPhone OS will be capable of tethering. The fact that AT&T has dropped unlimited data, and added a new tethering option where they let you give them $20 a month for the privilege of having the option to tether–but without any additional data allocation–also implies that tethering will be coming soon.

If AT&T’s data is accurate, 65 percent of those users are consuming less than 200Mb per month, and 98 percent are consuming less than 2Gb.

The megabytes can add up quickly, so IT administrators need to be diligent when examining the data needs of mobile users with iPads and consider carefully the available options for getting to the data.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/197999/making_sense_of_your_ipad_options_with_new_atandt_data_plans.html

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