Update | Apple's free sister paper Sharp Daily folds after losing millions
Next Media admits it misread the impact of mobile devices on reading habits of youth
Sharp Daily, the controversial free tabloid under the media empire of Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, will fold on Monday, just over two years after it hit the market.
Lai's group, Next Media, which also publishes Apple Daily, admitted it had overlooked the impact of mobile online news and had lost "several hundreds of millions of dollars" in running the daily, of which it had claimed to be giving out a million copies a day.
Sharp entered the field when there were already five competitors. Another free paper launched last year.
Staff expressed shock last night, while some observers and a competitor said they believed Lai adopted the wrong strategy.
In a statement filed to the stock exchange yesterday, Next Media said the move was to consolidate its print operations and enable the group to rationalise its resources and focus on profitable operations.
Lai declined to comment.
Next Media executive director Ip Yut-kin, who initiated the idea for the free paper, said the company had not expected the trend for reading news on mobile devices to develop so strongly and quickly.