In a bold move to avoid Apple’s in-app subscriptions, The Financial Times have bypassed the App Store to offer subscribers a non-app based subscription.
Instead of using an iPhone or iPad app to access content from The Financial Times, you will instead access a special address, app.ft.com, in your browser to read FT content. You can then save the webpage as a shortcut on your iDevice.
This move will bypass Apple’s 30% in-app subscription commission.
Access to the FT web app is free (with registration required) up until the 14th of June. After this time an FT.com subscription will be required for full access.
At the time of writing this post, the FT server was getting hit hard and app.ft.com was not loading up fully on my iPad browser.
This is a smart move by FT and it could become a precursor to other subscription magazines and newspapers that want to avoid Apple’s 30% in-app subscription charge.