The retailer, which was sold earlier this month for just £2 amid falling high street sales, has launched its first mobile app as part of a broader £1.8m marketing campaign, including sponsorship of the UKTV Network over Christmas.

The GPS-powered app lets users look up product reviews via its Pluggedin website, scan items in-store and reserve items for collection at their nearest outlet.

The app, which has been developed for iOS, Android and Blackberry by Grapple Mobile, was launched two weeks after the retailer made its mobile site fully transactional.

Ryan Thomas, Comet’s head of direct channels, told new media age he anticipated mobile traffic to increase steeply in 2012.

“About 10% of our overall traffic is from mobile devices if you include iPad and over the next 12-18 months that’s likely to double,” he said. “We initially had our mobile site [which only had click-and-collect functions until recently] which we launched about two years ago and now we’re starting to see it develop.”

Thomas also said that activity from Comet’s mobile audience was split roughly 50:50 between researching purchases and actually booking purchases.

“My aspiration is to develop mobile and I’m quite keen to push the tablet experience,” he said. “We sell a lot of iPads ourselves and can see how the take-up is enormous.”

Thomas also added that it would look to deploy iPads both as in-store customer service aids for Comet’s staff as well more consumer-focused executions.

Alistair Crane, CEO of Grapple Mobile, said, “Mobile is the perfect platform for retailers to directly engage with customers at the point of purchase.”

He also added that it was crucial for retailers to consider a consumer’s in-store experience when developing a mobile strategy.