Independent editor Simon Kelner said that the launch of The Times tabloid had not eaten into its sales after it launched the tabloid paper into the market.
He added that as long as the effect was minimal on The Independent, he was happy with The Times selling as many copies as possible.
The launch of the "compact" Times is understood to have added around 50,000 copies a day or 4% to the paper's circulation, according to early figures.
As many as half of those 50,000 sales are thought to come from existing Times readers who have switched from reading the broadsheet version of the paper to the tabloid.
With what Independent editor Kelner has been saying and other anecdotal evidence, the compact Times appears to be winning new readers from The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph.
The compact version of the paper went on sale inside the M25, aping the strategy of rival The Independent, which first launched in this area at the end of September, targeting London commuters.
The Independent's circulation added 2% to its daily circulation figure to reach 240,326 in the most recent November ABCs and up year on year by 8.5%, making it the only broadsheet newspaper to improve circulation.
In contrast, The Times has been the worst affected broadsheet over the past year, down by 9.6% to 622,102. This represents a month-on-month fall of 1.4%. The launch of The Times tabloid on November 26 came too late to boost figures.
Speculation is now rife that, with the initial success of the compact version of The Times, a wider rollout of the tabloid will follow beyond London in 2004.
However, it is still thought unlikely that The Times will completely abandon the broadsheet newspaper any time soon in 2004.
Eyes are now on The Guardian, which is thought to have a tabloid version of its paper ready to go.
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