The Financial Times have withdrawn their app from the Apple Store in response to Apple’s greed with revenue and customer data.
Apple not only demand a 30% cut of revenues, but also retain full ownership of the customer data.
Apple’s terms may well be acceptable to companies with a relatively unknown name, but the FT’s move may signify the start of an interesting trend.
The key point is that the Financial Times are not abandoning the app altogether. They are simply taking it out of the Apple Store, then offering it to their subscribers via a browser-based web app.
Bypassing Apple in this way enables them to retain all of the revenue and data, and chances are that the move will cost them almost nothing in terms of subscribers.
If the model works, this may prove to be a slowly-devastating blow to Apple, as other companies begin to consider their own options.
This has the potential to undermine the whole concept of the App Store, and turn it into little more than an overpriced portal.
My money is on Google being the first to fill the gap in the market. If they can make it easy for users to find software for their devices, then the playing field will once again be levelled.
Time for Google to intervene and rescue the free market economy.
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