The Financial Times iPad app will be sponsored at launch by Hublot, the watchmaker, subsidising a two-month free access period, highlighting interest in Apple’s device from advertisers, a constituency as critical as readers to media owners.

Apple has allowed only a few publishers – including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal – to work with the device and there will be just a handful of dedicated media applications for the device at its US launch this weekend.

The early apps display a wide variety of business models, suggesting that there is little consensus among publishers about how to exploit a category of mobile devices they hope will help change the economics of content.