• Reuters, Friday, September 23, 2011 12:35 PM

Can media companies exist without Apple's App Store? Not only that, but they can thrive, as evidenced by the success the Financial Times is having sans Apple. According to Reuters, more than 700,000 people now use the Financial Times' Web-based mobile application to access news and other content -- making it more popular than the version sold in Apple's App Store.

"The business newspaper ... made a gamble in June when it prepared to ditch the App Store with the introduction of its Web-based app," Reuters reminds us. "The FT was one of the first major publishers to reduce its dependence on Apple Inc and go out with an HTML5-based mobile application that can be read by any browser, thus bypassing the App Store."

What's more, as FT.com Managing Director Rob Grimshaw tells Reuters: "People who are using the app are spending much more time with the content ... They are consuming about three times as many pages through the app as they are through the desktop in an average visit." The FT's Web-based mobile app now accounts for 15% of FT.com subscriptions, and 20% of total FT.com page views from mobile users.

Read the whole story at Reuters »