Rupert Murdoch is to shut iPad newspaper The Daily from 15 December, admitting that it has failed to win enough subscribers to make the online subscription venture viable in its 21 months of life.

News Corporation said that The Daily, which was unveiled in a high-profile launch in February 2011, will "live on in other channels" with technology and some staff being integrated into the New York Post.

The Daily was losing $30m a year and amassed about 100,000 subs, according to an open email in June from founding editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo. Angelo, a close friend of James Murdoch, will take the role of publisher at the New York Post, returning to a title where he was previously executive editor.

"From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation," said Murdoch. "Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term".

The Daily, which operated a subscription model at $0.99 a week or $39.99 a year, needed about 500,000 subs to break even. In July it was reported that as many as a third of the 170 staff at The Daily faced being cut.

"We will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties," said Murdoch. "I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily."

Greg Clayman, publisher of The Daily, will oversee News Corp's global digital strategy, new digital investments and distribution partnerships, working with chief technical officer Paul Cheesbrough.

Paul Carlucci, who has served as publisher of The New York Post since 2005, will move to focus on his role as chairman of the News America Marketing division.

In February last year Rupert Murdoch took the stage at the Guggenheim in New York alongside Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of internet services, to unveil the Daily as News Corp's big bet on the future of news publishing in the tablet age.

"New times require new journalism," he said at the time. "The challenge is to take best of traditional journalism and combine with best of contemporary technology."

Murdoch had high expectations for what he believed The Daily needed to deliver to be deemed a success: "When we're selling millions."

However at the time he added that costs to run The Daily – with no subscribers or advertisers – would be "less than half a million dollars a week".

Murdoch's move came amid a flurry of activity by publishers to attempt to take advantage of the rise of tablet and smartphone technology.

Days after Murdoch's announcement Arianna Huffington's online news and opinion site The Huffington Post was acquired by AOL for $315m.

A few months earlier Tina Brown stunned the established publishing order by merging her digital venture, the Daily Beast, to try and revitalise ailing venerable current affairs weekly Newsweek. In October this year the print edition was axed.

Murdoch hailed The Daily as the future of journalism with "no paper, no multimillion-dollar presses, no trucks".

However with only a fraction of the number of subscribers Murdoch envisioned to make it a success, The Daily was unsustainable.

Murdoch's digital-only move followed the July 2010 announcement that the Times and Sunday Times newspapers would go behind a paywall.

The two titles were part of an "all or nothing" digital approach, stories were completely stripped from indexing on Google News, a strategy from which News International has recently relaxed.

Earlier this year the paywalls were temporarily removed, for events such as the Queen's jubilee and selected days of the Olympics.

In September News International eased its policy to allow headlines and limited content from articles available on Google as part of a "limited preview". Sister title the Sun's website remains free.

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