Comcast Interactive Media’s Fandango has expanded its suite of mobile commerce-enabled destinations with the launch of a new application designed specifically for Apple’s iPad.

Fandango thought it was important to create an application that was tailor-made for the iPad to take advantage of its specific features. The iPad application lets film fans browse from their couch or the local coffee house for showtimes, fan reviews, exclusive clips and trailers, and ticketing information for movies throughout the holiday season.

“With our new Fandango iPad app, we wanted to capture the very real buzz of what is happening at the movies this weekend,” said Jessica Yi, head of products at Fandango, Los Angeles.

“So in addition to a visual representation of ticket sales, it is useful to have three columns of reviews per movie, featuring fan reviews and critics’ reviews courtesy of MetaCritic and a third column of buzz from our partner FlickTweets, which culls the most relevant tweets for each movie,” she said.

Fandango, a unit of Comcast, sells tickets to more than 16,000 screens nationwide. Its platforms feature reviews, commentary and trailers, and offer the ability to select a film, plan where and when to see it and buy tickets in advance.

Fandango’s mobile Web site is at http://mobile.fandango.com.

Fandango for iPad
Fandango claims that its movie showtimes, ticketing and information applications have been downloaded more than 10 million times across various devices and platforms, including iPhone/iPod touch, Google’s Android, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, HP’s Palm WebOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.

However, Ms. Yi said that Fandango’s earliest and greatest success has been on the Apple family of devices. Its iPhone application, which launched in March of 2009, has ranked as high as No. 1 among free entertainment applications, and is consistently in the Top 100 in the App Store.

The Fandango iPad application has refined the features of Fandango’s previous applications and adds new ones, including “The Pulse,” a visual representation of the company’s hottest ticket-sellers, viewable in both list and map formats.

Other new features include movie reviews from professional critics and film fans alike, plus Movie Tweets, all on one large multi-touch screen.

The iPad application has map integration that knows moviegoers’ locations and helps them find film titles, theaters, showtimes and tickets.

Expanded video, photos, trailers, clips and exclusive interview features take advantage of the iPad’s full-screen HD display.

Fandango created the iPad version to be different from the smartphone versions of the application.

“You can better grasp the impact of ticket sales, as depicted in ‘The Pulse,’ with the real estate of the iPad screen,” Ms. Yi said. “It would not be surprising to see even more engagement on the iPad app, because the clusters of movie posters—representing ticket transactions—moving through the Pulse, in my opinion, can be mesmerizing.

“People may watch an upcoming movie trailer on TV and pull up their iPad to learn more about the film,” she said.

“By using our iPad app, film fans can check out the early buzz on an upcoming movie—between the early reviews and tweets—and also see how well it is selling—before it opens—by checking out Fandango’s Pulse.”

Final Take
Fandango for Android