It looks like Pizza Hut have managed to use an iphone app to drive a large number of sales. Apparently in the last three months the iphone app been downloaded more than a million times and has also generated more than a million dollars in sales in the US.

The company did have a WAP enabled mobile site before launching the iphone app but as Bernard Acoca of Pizza Hut explained it did not have the “explosive level of growth” seen with the iPhone app. It probably helps that users of the App get a 20% discount. It was also an advantage that it featured in apple adverts in the US. However it clearly shows that other food outlets could benefit from this move. Rivals Dominos have also targeted mobile devices with a iphone optimized website.

So how do you know if an i-phone app would work for your customers? Clearly there is a specific demographic who are using iphonesat the moment. In a recent report Forrester suggested that companies should do some market research to identify who if any of your customers are on iphone.. For instance “Coca-cola recognised a segment of its younger customers were on the iPhone and found that an app could be a way of connecting with a youthful audience at a reasonable price”. Clearly it always pays to know your audience!

The iphone povides plenty of opportunites to be creative and these are the applications that have really worked when it comes to branding. “For instance, Zippo’s big idea was to turn an iPhone into a virtual cigarette lighter that often gets used by live concert-goers who in the past would have used a real lighter during an encore,” Forrester says “The application has been downloaded more than 3 million times and rose as high as the No. 2 free iPhone application.”

 Here at SociaLNK we strive to keep ahead of the latest developments in technology. All the evidence shows that in the West mobile will be huge in 2010. In Asia it clearly already is!