Know your customer, wherever they are, and use that knowledge, advised Stephen Pinches, Group Product Manager for Mobile & Emerging Platforms at the Financial Times, at the 5th Tablet & App Summit last week in Frankfurt. This philosophy is why the paper decided to build its own web-based app for the iPad rather than be part of Apple’s Newsstand: because as well as taking a 30% cut of subscription revenue, Apple does not provide publishers with subscriber data.

Within six weeks of Apple’s demand that publishers offer the same subscription deals through iTunes as they do on their own site, the FT rebuilt its native app as a web app. “It has all the things you would expect from a native app,” Pinches said, but “it allows us to enact whatever business model we choose.”

“We believe that data is fundamental to build our model,” he said, and gave personalized content as an example of how to strengthen relations with readers and offer a better service. “If you are a CEO of a media company we can tell you what other CEOs at media companies are reading.”

For Android devices, the FT took the HTML5 web app and “wrapped it in a little code” to put in the Google store. The paper has already launched a Windows 8 app too.