By Nicola Brookes, Atex Communications Manager
Posted on November 4 09:01, 2011
An interesting nugget of news this week came in the success of the Financial Times’ newly adopted digital strategy. It made a gamble in June by ditching the App Store and launching an HTML5 App which can be downloaded from the paper’s own website.
The FT was the first major news publisher to launch an app of this type and it seemed like a risky move at the time, but one that seems to be paying off. Apparently more than 700,000 people now use the browser-based app, which is compatible with smartphones and tablet platforms, to access news and other content, making it far more popular that the version sold in the App Store.
Interestingly, the FT announced this week that over a fifth of its online traffic now comes from mobile devices. On top of that, the Group has recorded overall revenue growth of 6%.
So, this concept got me thinking... now that the FT has demonstrated that media companies can leave Apple behind and still see digital growth, does this indicate the start of a future trend? Maybe, but probably not for some time.
This solution might work for some other publishers, but HTML5 apps are unlikely to completely take over from native apps.
HTML5 is great and makes sense in a lot of scenarios, such as mobilising a website, but native will probably continue to have the advantage because it is optimised for the device and wins in terms of speed and features (at the moment). There are also marketing benefits to the app store – especially for smaller businesses which rely on potential customers finding their app there. Ultimately though, it’s all down to the user and both are viable solutions that customers will be asking for.
Has all the excitement of HTML5 made you reconsider native app development for your business? We hope you’ll jump in with your thoughts!
