CHICAGO—Malauzai Software announced from BAI Retail DeliveryThursday that credit unions have a considerable lead over bankswhen it comes to iPhone apps.

The provider of mobile banking apps for community financialinstitutions made the announcement as part of its results of arecent mobile app deployment study that counted bank and creditunion iPhone apps in Apple's App Store. The study looked atfinancial institutions in the asset range of $50 million to $15billion.

While the study showed that overall, 55% of financialinstitutions in this range had deployed an iPhone app.Approximately 65% of credit unions in the asset range had appsavailable in the App Store, compared to only 51% of banks.

Not surprisingly, when the study group was further segmented,smaller institutions had a lower penetration rate. Financialinstitutions in the $50 million to $100 million asset range had apenetration of only 29%, while those with assets from $1 billion to$5 billion led with 89% penetration. However, institutions in the$5 billion to $15 billion range came in slightly lower, at 85%.

While a penetration of 55% may seem low given all the hype aboutmobile, Robb Gaynor, Malauzai's chief product officer, told CUTimes mobile adoption is actually expanding at a reasonablepace.

“Last year when we looked at this, penetration was about 37%,”Gaynor said, “so that's a 40 to 50% growth in one year. Give it twoor three more years and we'll be close to 100%.”

Gaynor also pointed out that the study doesn't necessarily painta complete picture.

“This doesn't mean necessarily mean that these financialinstitutions don't have mobile,” he said. “They may be doing textor browser-optimized banking.”

He also acknowledged that the survey doesn't take into accountfinancial institutions that are currently in the process ofdeploying a mobile solution.

“About 30% of our own customers have signed, but have not yetdeployed our solution,” he told CU Times.

Commenting on credit unions' apparent lead in mobile deployment,Gaynor said that just within Malauzai's client base, he's observedthat in a given asset range, credit unions are often moreinnovative than banks.

“They like to go fast,” he said.