The Financial Times says it will give a £300 or $480 rebate to its 1,800 staff against the purchase of an iPad or other tablet.
Newspaper publishers are clearly getting bullish about the prospects of a post-web future in which editions of their product are delivered, a bit like in print, to tablets.
The FT, which has its own app on iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab, wants to encourage the tablet reading habit in its own staff first. It means a potential bill of £540,000 or $864,000. Even staff who already own a tablet will get the payout. Seems like one way to spend this year’s bonuses, and will do no harm to the FT’s tablet reader count.
Here is FT Group CEO John Ridding’s memo to staff…
The Financial Times’ iPad app made £1 million from ad sales since May launch, mostly through a big Hublot sponsorship, and has 400,000 users, accounting for 10 percent of new FT digital subs, the publisher said in October.