• January 21, 2010

National Geographic has been an active app publisher, offering roughly a dozen titles in Apple's App Store. Its latest is a world atlas app for the iPhone and iPod touch that includes three different styles of world maps: the standard political one, an "antique" view, and a satellite-view map.

The $1.99 atlas app also comes with GPS functionality and allows users to create customized maps with pins and photos using its searchable index of over 6 million places. Aaron Kohn, general manager of mobile at National Geographic, said the company has so far been generally pleased with the sales of its apps, which range in price from free to $14.99 for its birding field guide.

He noted that some of the Nat Geo games, including the archeologically themed "Herod's Lost Tomb," have been especially strong performers. "We continue to work on maximizing our ROI for different apps based on their purpose--downloads for promotion, conversions to paid apps and downloads of premium products," he said.

Nat Geo has more apps in the pipeline, encompassing maps, games, travel, and education titles as well as updates of existing ones. --Mark Walsh