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This week, Citibank released a new banking application for iPad, designed to give customers access to common banking tasks (balance checks, bill pay, transfers, etc.) as well as financial analysis tools. While we don't (and can't) cover all mobile application launches individually, the new Citibank iPad is an interesting case study that shows how a large organization has thoughtfully developed a platform-specific application instead of simply repackaging its mobile app for the bigger tablet-sized screen.

In addition, the financial tools now available in the Citi iPad app seem to take inspiration from similar online services, like Intuit's money management suite at Mint.com, for example. And, says the company, the iPad app's progress won't stop here. It will be under constant evolution, getting "smarter" over the coming weeks, and may even help users manage offers and rewards in the future.

The new version of the Android Market promised by Google earlier this month has begun rolling out to Android 2.2+ devices in the wild. The first sightings of the updated mobile application were made by members of the XDA-Developers forum, who have already extracted the mobile application and made it available to others who just can't wait for the download.

In addition to a refreshed user interface, U.S. users will also be able to rent thousands of movies from their device and purchase e-books. These two moves in particular make Android a more competitive option to the Apple iPhone than it had been previously.

According to a new report from analytics firm Distimo, the average selling price for iPhone games has declined by 28% over the last year. However, the revenue generated by the most successful freemium games has increased by a factor of 10. The increase is due to the popularity of in-app purchases, which are now used in 35% of the 300 most popular games in the iPhone App Store.

Sencha Touch Charts are a new offering from mobile app framework and tools provider Sencha. Recently launched into beta, these charts lets mobile developers build HTML5 Web applications for data visualization and exploration.

Mobile users can then manipulate the charts using familiar gestures - swipes, pinches, reverse pinches, drag-and-drop, etc. - to really interact with data, on either their phone or tablet computer.

Payments company Jumio is today launching a new technology called Netswipe that turns any webcam into a credit card reader, both on the desktop and on mobile. The service aims to bridge the convenience of online and mobile shopping with the security inherent in face-to-face transactions. It also makes it incredibly easy to shop — you just hold up your credit card in front of your webcam to complete the transaction.

Today, mobile application development vendor appMobi launched a new 1-Click payment technology called cloudKey which secures users' credit card information for online purchases on their device, not on remote servers. With the wave of recent high-profile hacking attacks on companies like Sony, Citi and AT&T, even non-security minded folks have become aware of the need for improvements to the current system.

Until now, credit card accounts and personal information have been stored in centralized, online databases, making them vulnerable to attacks. With the new cloudKey system, which uses standard encryption technology and a "distributed key" topology, appMobi aims to deliver a more secure solution.

With Nokia's company earnings call now behind us, one of the most startling figures indicative of the decline of the mobile phone maker was this: for the first time ever, the Apple iPhone surpassed Nokia in smartphone sales.

Nokia says it sold 16.7 million smartphones in the previous quarter (April through June). During that same time, Apple sold over 20 million iPhones.

Tango, a cross-platform mobile video calling startup, is today announcing its first expansion to a non-mobile platform: the Windows desktop. Sometime later this summer, the new PC software will debut, joining Android (phone and tablets) and iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) as the third major platform launch for the company over the past nine months.

Operator-led mobile commerce initiative Isis announced today that it has formed relationships with all four major payment networks here in the U.S.: Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. That means Isis's upcoming mobile wallet has taken a big leap forward in terms of supporting all the ways people choose to pay, whether by credit card, debit card or even prepaid accounts.

Isis, which uses a wireless chipset-based technology called NFC, will enable people to use their phones to pay for transactions at point-of-sale, just by tapping or waving their phone.

Document hosting and sharing site Scribd is venturing into the mobile space in order to give its publishers an opportunity to attract more readers. With a new mobile reader application called Float, Scribd aggregates content from news sites, magazines, blogs, and Scribd.com as well as from your social networks like Facebook and Twitter. You can also save items you find online to read later in Float, with the use of a specialized browser bookmarklet.

But what's most unique about this app is the way it reformats the text for the small screen. The "floating text" reading experience, which gives the app its name, reflows text originally formatted for the Web for better reading on mobile devices.