While the NYT has been heavily focused on its apps for the past two years, Boston.com unveiled its free news app in the iTunes Store last March.

SEE ALSO: NYTCo Begins Marketing Mobile Content Platform To Other Pubs

As CEO Janet Robinson told investors during the NYTCo’s Q2 earnings call, the NYT has had 4.5 million downloads for its iPhone app over past two years. In June alone, Robinson said the company had approximately 106 million pageviews from its mobile sites and apps. A full paid app is also coming to iPad in addition to the free, ad-supported Editor’s Choice app, in conjunction with the metered paywall that’s being introduced early next year. The Scoop NYC lifestyle and city guide app, which launched two months ago, has been downloaded over 100,000 times.

That kind of app rollout is one of the things Moriarty will attempt to produce at Boston.com. The site doesn’t have an iPad or Android related app yet, but those are other areas that Moriarty will be taking a look at in terms of the paper’s approach.

Separately, while the NYTimes.com heads toward launching its metered paywall early next year, Moriarty will help focus the debate on whether Boston.com can develop one as well. He starts the job on Sept. 13 and will report to Martin Baron, editor of The Boston Globe.

Moriarty has spent most of his professional career at the NYTCo (NYSE: NYT). He was a reporter and editor when joined the NYTCo in 1993, and by 2001, the NYT tapped him as a director of product development.  Two years later, Moriarty was named VP for product and technology at Boston.com. He stayed there for two more years before his nearly four years as VP for new media at
the company’s Regional Media Group, where he was oversaw for the internet strategy and operations for the unit’s 14 newspapers.