The Financial Times made much of the news last week that paid-for online subscriptions have now exceeded print circulation for the first time. But it is probably worth noting that as a large proportion of the print-sale is given away – paid-for online sales will have exceeded paid-for print ones for the FT some time ago. According to a trading update from parent company Pearson, subscriptions to FT.com now exceed 300,000 and are up 31 per cent year on year while registered users are up 29 per cent to 4.8m.This compares with a paid-for print sale in the UK of 62,600 (plus 30,003 free bulk give-aways). ABC does not tell us how much of the FT’s rest of the world circulation comprises bulks – we just get the headline numbers of 103,9363 for Europe, 33,079 for Asia and 67,607 in the US. But even all those abroad numbers are real sales, the total paid-for sale of the FT print edition is a good deal lower than the 300,000 talked about last week. Other key numbers revealed by the FT last week included: corporate online subs up 40 per cent to 2,300; 25 per cent of traffic to FT.com coming via mobile and 15 per cent of new subs coming via mobile. According to the FT, the paper’s free mobile app now has 2.7m users. Tweet
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