BNO News is taking the unusual step of shutting down its iPhone app, as the company announced that it is shifting its focus toward business-to-business services and away from providing breaking news to consumers.

The iPad app launched in August 2009, and BNO News also managed the @BreakingNews Twitter account through December 2009, collecting more than 1.5 million followers, but the company transferred the Twitter feed to msnbc.com.

BNO News founder and president Michael van Poppel said:

In 2009, we decided to shift our focus and eventually offer our services solely to media organizations and other companies that want to make use of a news service. As our wire services are growing, our content is expanding, and our company is quickly expanding, we want to give our clients the full advantage by only offering services directly to them.

Our team has built an impressive newsgathering system over the past several years, and we are now able to provide full daily news coverage to our clients. Our company is expanding rapidly, and just last week, we welcomed a global sales manager to our team.

Unfortunately, only offering services to our clients also means we have decided to end our iPhone services. However, I would like to thank everyone who relied on BNO News through the iPhone application, as well as our loyal followers on Twitter.