The ABC sales figures for September were confirmed today as 429,554 for The Times and 984,223 for The Sunday Times. Combined with 111,036 digital subscribers, we now have a total paid audience of 540,590 for The Times and nearly 1.1 million for The Sunday Times.

Almost half of The Times daily sale is now made up of print and digital subscribers.

The number of digital subscribers to The Times and The Sunday Times increased by, approximately 10% in the three months to the end of September.

Tom Mockridge said:

“I am very encouraged by these figures. In contrast to the industry trend of declining circulation, The Times and The Sunday Times are showing that they can increase the audience paying for their digital journalism.

“From now on, we plan to release our digital subscription numbers every month to provide the best possible transparency to our commercial partners and clients.”

The Times and Sunday Times are available for download on all platforms and devices including Android, Amazon Kindle and iOS5. The Times and The Sunday Times iPad apps are available as part of a digital subscription for £2 for a week. The Times iPad app is also available direct from iTunes at £9.99 for a month while The Sunday Times app is available direct from iTunes for £1.79 a week. 

Additionally, the iPad edition of The Sunday Times has come out on top in a survey of 3,500 of the world's leading media apps.

For the second year running The Sunday Times iPad edition has won joint first position in iMonitor's ranking of the best media iPad apps in the English-speaking world.

It scored 14.5 points out of a possible 15 in a rating system based on design, functionality and use of rich media. Other apps sharing the top spot included El Pais from Spain, Bild from Germany, the Herald Sun from Australia and, in the US, the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle.

The accolade comes a week after the app won an XMA Cross Media award for excellence in digital publishing. It was the only British winner in a field that included newspapers from Singapore, Norway, Germany and the US.

The Sunday Times website has also picked up several awards, including wins in six categories at the 2011 Online Media Awards, including best investigative journalism for the Fifa bribery investigation, online editor of the year for Gordon Thomson, best video journalism, best use of photography and best designed site — as well as the Grand Prix award for website of the year.

The Sunday Times was the biggest winner at the awards, followed by the BBC with four prizes and the Guardian with two.