Nearly half of FT online subscribers accessing content via mobile

Nearly half of digital subscribers to the Financial Times website are accessing content via mobile devices, according to FT.com managing director Robert Grimshaw.

In an interview with Beet.tv (embedded below) Grimshaw said there have been "huge developments" in mobile at the FT, with a 2010 survey revealing that 45 per cent of its digital subscribers and registered users consume FT news content via mobile platforms.

"That's a number that surprised us," he told Beet.TV at the paidContent2011 conference. "I think it demonstrates actually how quickly the audience is picking up mobile devices and shifting away from the desktop and into the many new digital channels that are emerging.

" ... The big thing for us over the past 12 months or so has been seeing the evolution of mobile as a commercial platform, as a place to do business.

"We've seen a lot more interest from advertisers. Now we're seeing about a third of advertisers in the digital space asking for mobile elements when they give us advertising briefs. If you go back a year those briefs would have been relatively rare, and now you're seeing it from a large number of advertisers.

"When you look at the subscription side, what we're seeing is that people are very willing to do business on a mobile platform. They're buying subscriptions directly through their mobile devices and over 2010 we saw 10 per cent of our new digital subscriptions every week coming from mobile devices."

The Financial Times' preliminary results for 2010, published last week by parent company Pearson, showed that FT.com experienced a 79 per cent year-on-year increase in registered users, taking the total to more than three million.

The results also showed a 50 per cent increase in digital subscriptions on 2009, with 207,000 registering, and 900,000 downloads of FT apps on mobile phones and tablet devices for the period.

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