The Financial Times has announced that it will be completely removing its news app from iOS over the next month, in favour of its HTML5 web app. The HTML5 web app was developed by Assanka, which the publisher acquired and rebranded as FT Labs last week.

Mobile drives 12 per cent of subscriptions and 19 per cent of traffic to FT.com, and the number of users on smartphones has increased 52 per cent in the last six months. That growth, the company says, is directly attributable to its web app, which saws it userbase overtake the iOS app within three months of launch – and exceeded 2m users with 10 months.

Reacting to the news, Dave Gwozdz, CEO of mobile ad network Mojiva, told Mobile Marketing he thinks its a logical move for a company like the FT. “A straight newsfeed doesnt need to access all the functionality of a phone – the accelerometer, cameras, etc,” Gwozdz says. “Will we see everyone doing this? No. There are still questions, like the need for discovery – if youre not in an app store, how do you make sure you attract downloads, and monetise the product properly? But its safe to say, if youre a news organisation or magazine needing to build for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone, HTML5 can definitely alleviate some of the expenses and testing involved in that.”

The FT originally pulled the app from iTunes in the middle of last year, but subscribers who had already installed the app could continue to use it, but that will now change.