The FT Group, publisher of the Financial Times, recorded a 12% year-on-year revenue increase in 2010 - as Press Gazette reported - according to its parent company Pearson.
Pearson said that FT Group drew £403m in revenue in 2010, with underlying growth of 9%, and its operating profit increased 54% to £54m.

Also the Financial Times website registered a 79% increase in registered users year-on-year in 2010, taking the total to more than three million, as Journalism.co.uk reported, citing preliminary results published by Pearson.

The article also said that Feb 28's results also show a 50 per cent increase in digital subscriptions on 2009, with 207,000 registering, and 900,000 downloads of FT apps on mobile phones and tablet devices for the period.

The Guardian reported that, announcing the results, chief executive Marjorie Scardino has raised some concerns about the terms Apple is demanding for print app subscriptions, arguing that as competition increases publishers will no longer have to cave-in.

In the competition for online news subscriptions, just after Apple announced the introduction of an in-app subscription for contentproducers, Google announced its new service for digital payments for news, Google One Pass.

While Apple keeps 30% of subscription revenue if sold through iTunes, Google asks for 10% via One Pass.

Apple's terms and conditions are tough not only regarding subscription revenues, but they also retain control of costumers' information.

With regards to Apple's terms, Scardino said "it is unclear how their proposal is going to work, we are still talking to them. The important thing to remember is there are many tablets coming out and multiple devices... (from) Kindle to mobiles. If indeed Apple are not happy to give us costumer data then maybe we wil get it somewhere else".

As the Guardian previously reported, The Financial Times, which generated a tenth of its new digital subscriptions from its iPad app last year, had already expressed "concerns over changes to an approach that has so far worked well for our readers and the broader publishing ecosystem around tablet devices, and that may compromise our business model".

"It has always been an issue that we couldn't have millions of printing plants around the world," Scardino said. "The presence of all these tablets has been very important to the FT. Not only has it given a good medium, congenial to our readers, but it will proliferate, it is a global opportunity for us."

Sources: Press Gazette, Journalism.co.uk, Guardian (1), (2)