Canada’s Yellow Pages Group has become the latest North American directory publisher to launch an iPhone application. This joins every major U.S. publisher (most recently R.H. Donnelley), to announce new mobile products. Along with the iPhone app will be a BlackBerry application, which can be found in BlackBerry’s new App World (its answer to Apple’s App Store).

According to the press release, this will include:

– Business, Person and Reverse phone number look-up

– Save to your favourites (My Favs) and/or address book

– Share listing results with others via email/sms

– Local proximity-based search using GPS & Maps (for devices which this is enabled)

– Direct connect to Voice Search (no charge usage)

“The application puts the power of our network in the hands of every BlackBerry and iPhone user and gives our advertisers access to a significant number of potential customers,” said YPG VP of Marketing Jean Pascal Lion in the release. “In the first 48-hours since going live with BlackBerry and iPhone, we have seen a significant increase in mobile traffic to YellowPages.ca at a rate more than 30-times our regular daily mobile searches.”

The name of the game for directory publishers these days is to build up traction and traffic through their own branded mobile apps as well as listing distribution on other mobile local search apps. A TKG report will launch later this week on this subject, followed by a separate report on the all important question: Where do I devote mobile development resources given expanding platform options (i.e., iPhone, Android, Java, Palm, etc.)?