CNBC is reporting that News Corporation is seriously considering establishing a unit to create subscription-based content for  applications on digital tablet devices such as the Apple iPad.

The unit would produce original multimedia content that is not sourced from any of News Corp’s existing newspaper titles. It would the reports says be more populist in tone and designed for a US national audience.

It follows the success News Corp has enjoyed with its Wall Street Journal iPad, which has sold 10,000 subscriptions at $17.29 a month April while The Times racked up 5,000 iPad subscriptions at £9.99 in just three days.

The decision to launch the unit is based on the growing belief that while there remains doubt about users paying for general news content stuck behind paywalls they will pay for portable content, which they can access on smartphones and tablet computers.

According to CNBC the plan under consideration “would aim to redefine how news is consumed in the digital space with an entirely new interactive format” and would neither be a newspaper nor a website and it “would not be derivative of one of News Corp’s existing papers”.

The report follows News Corp’s acquisition last month of e-reading and digital store front platform Skiff from Hearst.

Skiff sells digital versions of newspapers and magazines for a variety of devices from e-readers to netbooks and mobiles and as part of Skiff’s development plans there was a lightweight and flexible e-reader of its own in the works – although it is not known if this plan is still moving ahead.