Apple’s App Store Policies Have Limited Shelf Life

Continued from page 1

Great while it lasted

According to Reuters the iPad proved particularly successful for the Financial Times helping to push subscriptions to FT.com to the point where it accounted for a quarter of the Financial Times’ total sales. Digital subscriptions rose by 34 percent, mobile devices accounted for 22 percent of FT.com traffic and more than 15 percent of new subscriptions.

But after the extension of the new in-app rules it became the first major publisher to launch an HTML5 web-app in June and when negotiations with Apple over data and the app store levy broke down it pulled its apps entirely on the 31 August and began encouraging subscribers to migrate to the web version.

“Faced with the challenge of delivering multiple versions of the same content and with what they see as the punitive terms and conditions of some platform providers,” Forrester analyst Nick Thomas wrote in a breakdown of the Financial Times’ decision at the time of the web-app launch in June , “other publishers are keen to see if the FT model offers a way forward.”

The list of people who do indeed see it as the way forward now includes Amazon, Vudu (Walmart’s video streaming service) and Kobo (an ebook service).

Amazon’s free Kindle app is still available but no longer features the Kindle Store button. Instead, it has developed a near identical web-app, the Kindle Cloud Reader, where users can read their books and buy new ones yet all of the revenue goes to Amazon.

And the list grows longer when you add to it the conscientious objectors like The Wall Street Journal, Google Books and Barnes & Noble (another ebook service) who have so far kept their apps open but removed all purchasing links in order to avoid giving Apple anything.

Not the last

HTML5 is the common factor between each of these web-based alternatives. It is attractive because it can be read by any up-to-date browser and optimising it for different platforms is less work than writing a new app for each platform.

With iOS, shortcuts can be added to the home screen that appear similar to apps so the user experience is almost exactly the same. With something like an e-reader app an Internet connection is required to buy and sync your library, but the synced library is available offline.

As such, it is not hard to envisage more big brands switching to this way of working. The wild popularity of the iPhone and iPad provides Apple some protection against a mass exodus for now, but it is also the reason it is arrogant enough to levy the massive 30 percent charge.

There is a certain irony that firms should use HTML5 links instead of iOS apps. In the early days of the iPad, Apple steadfastly refused to support Adobe Flash with Steve Jobs arguing that Flash was proprietary and HTML5 was the future.

Now HTML5 links to web-based apps are providing an alternative to Apple’s walled garden, and real alternatives are springing up. People will not always tolerate giving Apple so much for doing so little.