There’s trouble in Apple’s iOS content walled garden. The Financial Times, instead of giving Apple 30 percent of its in-app subscription revenue has launched an HTML5 web app. Currently, the website is optimized for the iPhone and iPad but that’s just the first cut. The website will soon offer a clippings service allowing users to time-shift article reading. The Financial Times employs a metered access system—up to 10 articles per month are free for registered users.
The website itself is impressive, looking almost exactly like the native app. The user is prompted to add a bookmark to their home screen in Mobile Safari and the site loads full-screen, without browser chrome. This is an important development for HTML5.
By the end of the month, Apple will start charging publishers 30 percent for in-app subscriptions and simultaneously require subscriptions to take place in the iTunes App Store instead of directly with the publisher. More importantly, Apple solely determines what content it considers to be appropriate for use on its devices.
The Financial Times isn’t exactly an impulse purchase, so the benefits of Apple’s frictionless iTunes App Store ecommerce likely won’t be missed. The publisher would almost certainly rather maintain a direct relationship with its subscribers, retaining information about those subscribers for itself.
The Financial Times told Robin Wauters, writing for TechCrunch, that writing multiple native apps for multiple platforms is “logistically and financially unmanageable.”
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