Apple News Plus launched in the US and Canada in March with more than 300 titles signed up, and has now expanded to the UK and Australia. For £9.99 per month UK subscribers can access the more than 150 magazines signed up so far, including Empire, Grazia, Cosmopolitan UK, Esquire UK, Four Four Two, Hello, Q and Men’s Health UK.
The Times has seen subscriptions sales jump 200 percent in the last year, since it pivoted from publishing on a breaking-news cycle to a digital editions-based publishing strategy a year ago. Subscriber churn is also at a record low, down 4 percentage points compared to the previous year, according to Catherine Newman, chief marketing officer at The Times and Sunday Times. Last summer, total print and digital paying subscribers rested at 413,600, according to the publisher. And in the first half of 2016, new paying-subscriber sales rose 200 percent compared to the first half of 2015
The Times and The Sunday Times plan to update their apps and a new combined website just three times a day — abandoning the rolling news coverage that has become the status quo for digital publishers
CEO of News UK has said he is “optimistic” that the Times and Sunday Times are on course to become profitable
