To learn more about how Kayak develops its services, feel free to read the blog post below.

http://www.kayak.com/news/untold-story-of-the-new-kayak-iphone-app.bd.html

Interesting comments from Mr. Birge, though I wonder if the angle on simply tackling “friction” users experience and “providing them a tool as a service” is a bit of exec-speak.

Does the way they’re handling credit cards now enable mobile penetration strategy while giving them time to work out transactional issues with suppliers – possibly via direct-connect?

Could they then bring cashflow forward via transactions while also avoiding any dependency on GDS incentives?

Fascinating that most of the 650k app downloaders are new customers, too. I think it’s been demonstrated that a huge majority of users stop downloading after they get 5 apps. We might then infer that those 650k people are very unlikely to download an app from Expedia, Orbitz, etc.

It’s also great off-deck penetration that might smooth the way to some on-deck deals with carriers.

Fascinating.

One thing though – I wonder if the 5% of search volume is for Safari overall or Safari on iPhones specifically. Seems incredible that a phone browser would be responsible for a higher % of searches than the same browser’s web version.