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Financial Times withdrawing its app from Apple App Store

5 September 2011 by
Financial Times withdraw the iPad and iPhone app from Apple App Store due to disagreements over user data ownership

Financial Times withdraw app from Apple App Store 

The last year winner of the Apple Design Award for the best iPad app has chosen to withdraw the app from the Apple store. Financial Times and other publishers has fought a long lasting battle with Apple regarding revenue share in the Apple App Store.

In February, Apple required app publishers to make subscription services available inside the App Store, giving Apple a 30% commission for each subscription. The major publishers did not endorse this new rule so in June, Apple turned around and relaxed its guidelines slightly. Apple still requires publishers to have a buy button inside the app which has to go to the App Store payment system. Financial Times was still not satisfied with the new rules as they did not want to sacrifice details about their subscribers and instead chose to withdraw FT-app from the Apple App Store. Access for subscribers are managed well through the HTML5 app.

Even though Apple tighten up the guidelines slightly in June allowing newspapers such at FT more freedom over how to set the price and sell their online content. Financial Times has done what all publishers should do, abandon closed systems and instead rely on open standards such as HTML5. Going the HTML5 route, FT won't have to develop one version for each mobile OS.

Visit app.ft.com to check out the new HTML5 app for iOS devices.

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Supa_Fly12 years, 6 months ago
I'll agree an open-standard is a good model. Unfortunately so is Objective-C (based on C++) also an open standard. Apple has presented the AppStore when non-other existed or even existed well enough to provide a seamless and intuitive experience ... along with 3 products (iPhone, iPad, & iPod-Touch) from scratch at the bottom of the market place to be THE defacto worldwide leader in 2/3 market segments (iPhone is 3rd worldwide). Apple EARNED its place.
Apple provided a real digital reading marketplace for these company's to the point that now OVERALL subscribers to news, digital news overshadow paper deliveries in the USA and almost globally. If the Financial Times wants to bet their earnings on the plethora of Android device users and PC users reading their news - without proper bookmarking & subscriptions - online ... good luck with that. The concept of reading newspaper or lengthy, though provoking articles on a large screen TV or desktop PC screen does not even come close to something being held in your hands. Years of research, independent research is against this model. Think about it. How on Earth did Apple succeed so quickly in less than 3yrs of offering newspaper content on both iPhone/iPod and iPad?!!?!
Common sense and research before posting opinions on articles. It's sound and I applaud it ... but there is plenty of information the defuncts this. EVEN if all major news distributors and publishing houses go against Apple's model it'll hurt them in the long run. It's all about the mighty $$$ (that's what brought them to the AppStore in the first place).
EDIT: Sorry Laffen, the original post shows that someone else posted this not you. But i still stand by what I've read elsewhere about going this route.
[ This Message was edited by: Prom1 on 2011-09-06 06:03 ]

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