With the new eBay Selling and eBay Classifieds iPhone applications, consumers can photograph and list an item in 60 seconds or less. Additionally, consumers can now list for free in eBay’s auction format, reaching 90 million active users around the world, the company claims.

“Mobile allows our customers to be shopping whenever, wherever they are,” Steve Yankovich, vice president of mobile at eBay, San Francisco, CA. “Oftentimes, people are in the mood to shop on the go.

“The eBay iPad app is for anyone that wants a compelling, shopping experience,” he said. “Our mobile footprint is global, and you can buy anything at all in the eBay marketplace through the app, so we’re looking at a broad range of people with this app.”

EBay iPad app
The iPad application lets users view and search through items in a gallery display.

Consumers can also scroll through a selection of items, filter search results by price and category, pinpoint items in a desired range with a pricing histogram and view item details without navigating away from search results.

The company’s mobile applications are available in more than 190 countries and eight languages and generate a mobile purchase every 2 seconds, according to eBay.

“People will purchase wherever there is the widest selection of merchandise, regardless it’s an iPad or iPhone or any other mobile device,” Mr. Yankovich said. “We clearly see that people want to shop on the go – last year we saw $600 million in eBay merchandise volume come through mobile devices and we expect to more than double that this year with $1.5 billion.

“There aren’t ads on our iPad app because we’re dealing with a relatively small screen and people who are on the go,” he said. “So we aren’t going to clutter their experience – our goal is to help them to find the product they’re looking for quickly and in a compelling way.”

New iPhone apps
The eBay Selling application lets users research sales trends and price ranges on the site and list similar items for sale, view the status of items for sale, share listings with Facebook and Twitter social networks and link to other eBay and PayPal iPhone applications.

Additionally, the eBay Classifieds application lets consumers post free ads with up to eight photos, either from an iPhone photo library or camera.

“We have completely redesigned the app for the iPad,” Mr. Yankovich said. “We are transforming the shopping experience – this is window shopping in the palm of your hand.

“We wanted to immerse the customer in product in a new, visual and compelling way and with basically only two screens in the app, the user never leaves the collection of product – when bidding, buying or refining search,” he said.

“And because of the way the products are presented, users can browse hundreds of items in seconds.”