Multiplied Media has announced that its flagship Poynt mobile search application is available now for the iPhone. The app so far has planted its stake on the BlackBerry with 2 million users — indeed the top mobile local app for the platform.

New features of the iPhone version include:

— Setting a Location: Poynt will detect your current location to begin a search or you can manually enter an address to use as your search location.

— Map View: Rotate the device to map a single or full set of search results.

— Augmented Reality: From within the map view, users can access a directional view of search results.

— Call Gesture: From a search result, hold the phone to your ear to automatically place a call.

— Address Book Integration: Add frequently accessed listings to your contacts for convenient future lookups.

When we talked to Multiplied CEO Andrew Osis in October, he told us there’s considerable expansion on the horizon. This will include smartphone platforms, geography and content sources. The former clearly pertains to today’s announcement and we’ll see more platform launches soon.

New Ground

Multiplied’s challenge will be replicating its BlackBerry success with a different user base and a decidedly more competitive local app marketplace in Apple’s App Store. To do this it will apply the other growth objective above: more content sources.

The BlackBerry app mostly covered local search categories such as business, people, restaurants and movie information. This is fitting to BlackBerry user demos, but as it expands to other platforms, Osis expressed a need to broaden its appeal to more of an uber local search utility.

This will include categories like gas prices, coupons, retail and other verticals whose use is growing among mobile users. But most notable in the iPhone launch are the features that not only fit its user base, but also the technical capabilities of the device itself (touch screen, etc.).

Chief among these (listed above) is augmented reality. This is becoming more and more of a popular value-add to mobile local apps (see Yelp’s “Monacle”). As we’ve argued, there are lots of moving parts such as local data and device compatibility (iPhone 3GS required in this case), but there is a lot to look forward to.

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