Tablet newspaper The Daily has 80K paying subscribers

Tablet newspaper The Daily has attracted more than 80,000 paying subscribers and 40,000 non-paying trail-only readers each week, it revealed Monday. The numbers are a sign that the News Corp.-owned innovative digital publication could succeed over time.

Ever since the launch of The Daily in February, people have wondered just how well an iPad-only publication could do when there are so many news sites available and many established news brands with their own iPad apps. The New Yorker iPad app, for example, has more than 100,000 iPad readers, with more than 20,000 exclusive subscribers on the iPad and more than 75,000 print subscribers using the app as well. An iPad-only New Yorker subscription runs $59.99 a year.

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Even with the positive-looking subscriber numbers, The Daily is far from having a sustainable business model in its current state. The publication charges $0.99 a week for access, so with 80,000 paying subscribers it brings in about $80,000 a week. But it costs $500,000 a week to run, so it will take time to attract enough subscribers for it to break even.

So far The Daily has offered its content only to iPad owners, but it will soon launch an Android version that can run on other tablets. Those will include 10-inch Android tablets like the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 7-inch tablets like the just-announced Amazon Kindle Fire. Availability on the Kindle Fire and other Android tablets should help the publication attract more subscribers.

The Daily’s readers spend between 20 and 30 minutes reading the app each day and view around 40 pages of the 120 pages published daily, according to Localytics. Those are promising engagement numbers and are an indication readers will continue to consume Daily content regularly.

What do you think of The Daily? Do you think an Android launch will help it build a larger following?