Financial Times web app passes a million users: News outside office hours consumed on iPhones and iPads

Source: Financial Times, 2011

Financial Times didn’t blink when Apple removed their native iPhone and iPad apps late August for failing to comply with strict in-app subscription policies. Actually, they took us aback with an excellent HTML5 web app which more than adequately replicates a native app experience. We weren’t terribly shocked when their web app became more popular than the iOS app.

Today, Financial Times announced the web app passed one million registered users. They put together a nice infographic to highlight the milestone (included below the fold), but it’s the section shown right above that intrigued us. Based on usage data collected from users, turns out registered users of the Financial Times web app prefer getting their financial news on smartphones and tablets in the morning hours, usually between 6am and 9am.

For most, this means mobile devices have become the go-to source for morning and evening news. As a day at the workplace progresses, most workers consume their news on computers until about 6pm, when smartphones and tablets take over as we commute, dine, watch evening news, check stocks and tuck kids to bed.

To us, this paints an interesting picture. The graph proves average folks get their news outside the workplace on mobile devices, resorting to computers only during office hours because we’re required to use them at workplace anyway. In other words, computers are for water cooler chit chats, iPhones are for breakfast browsing and iPads are for evenings. Go past the fold for the full infographic.