The Financial Times is launching an Apple circumventing web app

BEAN COUNTER FAVOURITE The Financial Times (FT) is going to launch an HTML5 web app for all tablets in a bid to free itself from Apple's cutthroat pricing demands.

The FT said it is in a "Mexican stand off" with Apple and it wants to cast its net much wider than the Apple Apps Store with a web based app designed to run on any tablet.

FT online managing director Rob Grimshaw told the Guardian that the FT refused to bow to Apple's demand to take a massive 30 per cent cut from its Apps Store service. Big technology companies like Google and Apple traditionally set the terms and shackle content providers so they have to have to pay up. In fact, Apple is currently being investigated in the US because the 30 per cent cut could fall afoul of US anti-trust laws.

"Their terms don't work for us. They won't move, we hope they will. It is a bit of a Mexican standoff," Grimshaw told the Guardian.

With so many other big players coming into the tablet market, Apple no longer has the dominance to dictate the terms that it once did. That's why the FT app, which will launch first on Ithings, will also be out on Samsung Galaxy kit, Motorola hardware and RIM's Playbook.

Grimshaw was also doing the rounds yesterday to promote the new FT web app and he told Reuters it had been on the cards since last year, as the FT was looking to extend its online reach.

"We've had this in mind since probably the middle of last year when we first started to realize how much would be involved ... if we had to write them all with native code," Grimshaw said.

The web app plan means that the FT app can be updated, configured and optimised much faster than native apps and will make the FT more digestible for bean counters using different hardware.

The HTML5 based app will be out next Tuesday at app.ft.com for Ithings first and punters will get a week's trial for free before they will have to pay the standard FT subscription rates. µ