Financial Times iPad App Becomes Website, Cuts Out Apple's 30% Take

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The Financial Times may have named Steve Jobs the Person Of The Year, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying to cut Apple out of their profits. FT introduced a new iPad “app”, but it’s actually an iPad-optimized webpage, not an app you’ll find in the app store. Why is this important? Because it’s not in the App Store, all the money from your subscription goes FT with Apple getting none of it.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Financial Times, they’re a financial newspaper of record out of London. The Wall Street Journal is more popular here in the United States, but the Financial Times is quite notable and you may recognize their iconic salmon-colored newspaper. They are completely preempting Apple on this, and they’ll be hosting their own iPad web app at app.ft.com. You’ll still need to pay a monthly fee (waived for subscribers of the paper-edition of the Financial Times) in order to access the content.

Because the Financial Times doesn’t have a proper iOS app, they won’t be included in Newsstand, the new iOS interface for digital magazines and newspapers. This isn’t the first clash that newspaper and magazine publishers have had with Apple. When you buy access to your favorite magazine or newspaper through the App Store, Apple historically has kept your personal information to themselves. A traditional newspaper or magazine subscription adds your address and personal information to a lucrative database the publisher holds. Not only does FT get to keep the 30% that Apple would have gotten, but they also get to keep your personal information.

I guess to remains to be seen if FT is missing anything by not being included in Newsstand. One mobile blog suggested that being included in Newsstand would be as necessary to newspapers and magazines as it is for record labels to be on iTunes. I don’t know about that, but FT is certainly making a gamble that inclusion in Newsstand isn’t as important as getting their addresses and their 30%.

And this isn’t even the first publication to go around Apple with a web app. Playboy is offering an iPad version of Playboy that is more or less an iPad- optimized version of a webpage. Playboy is doing it though to get around Apple’s App Store ban on ‘porn’. In the year 2011, Playboy is pretty tame, but I digress.