Murdoch’s Sun newspaper reportedly shuns paywall in favor of paid mobile apps and ads

It looks like The Sun, the final News Corporation newspaper in the UK to be freely available online, will remain so. That’s according to Robert Andrews over at Paid Content who says that the company’s British newspaper arm, News International has decided against a paywall for the title.

In 2010, the Times and Sunday Times applied a subscription fee, with the News of the World following earlier this year before hitting an untimely, disgraced end. It seems, however, that the UK’s best selling daily newspaper is to remain available on the Web for free. According to Paid Content, The Sun will introduce a paid mobile content app to complement its existing paid iPad app “imminently”, although it is currently consulting with readers on what would be a suitable fee.

Meanwhile, today’s report says that News International is undergoing a restructure that will emphasise ad sales, something that will be increasingly important to the Sun’s website if it is to remain free in a world of declining physical newspaper circulations.

This is not the first time we’ve heard reports of a ‘no paywall’ strategy for The Sun, but today’s report perhap sheds a little more light on the alternative strategy.