Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende has launched its first application for the iPad - before the device has been launched in the country.

The title developed its Berlingske Business app in three months and its is now available for download from the Apple Store.

The application will update with all the daily business news from the Berlingske website and offer a preview of the next day's headlines from 10:30pm each night. A free trial period will be offered to new users, after which it will cost 24DKK (approximately £2.85) a month.

Berlingske

The titles says it hopes to develop more features for the application with future updates, including adding broadcast news content to the app.

"We have a strategy that our content must be available on the platforms where our customers are. And I believe that our customers and readers in the future also will be on computers and iPads, which offers very interesting opportunities, because here we are able to charge for content. This is a new platform that does not suffer like the web, where everything from the beginning was given away. It gives us a new business model that we want to help to develop," says CEO of Berlingske Media, Lisbeth Knudsen on the Berlingske site (translated using Google Translate).

Knudsen adds that the title will look at a freemium model for the app with some free content covered by sponsorship deals.

Speaking at the World Editors Forum in Hamburg earlier this month, Annemarie Kirk, head of digital business development at Berlingske Media, said the application had been developed on a shoestring budget with a small team. Concept design and project management were carried out in Denmark and technological development in Kiev, Ukraine following a study into what applications and devices Berlingske should be launching onto.

Much of the new app's design was done by a newspaper designer from Berlingske's print edition, who had never worked on design for the title's website, said Kirk. She added that there had been a surge in traffic from iPads to Berlingske's website in recent months despite the lack of a Danish launch for the product.

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