There were many worthy nominations, but after careful consideration, Mobile Commerce Daily feels that eBay did an outstanding job in its mobile efforts. Here is a breakdown of eBay’s work in the mobile space in 2009.

Mobile commerce leader
With almost 1.5 million items bought via mobile on eBay this past holiday season, it is no surprise that the company has been chosen as the Mobile Retailer of the Year.

EBay brought its marketplace to cities across the country with a Mobile Boutique, where it issued an SMS call-to-action.

Within the eBay boutique, holiday shoppers could buy new products related to gifting trends such as “Eco-Excellence” and “Savvy Splurging” and search millions of gift options, as well as a live Wishes Stream that consumers could contribute to via SMS.

In addition, Flash Giveaways of $50 eBay Gift Cards were given to the first 100 guests to show up to the eBay Mobile Boutique on select days and share a secret password, available online via the eBay social networking sites.

Mobile shopping
Holiday shopping went mobile this season, with a surge in buyers using the eBay iPhone application and other eBay mobile properties to find great deals while on the go.

The number of items bought via eBay mobile applications this year was triple last year’s holiday volume.

In 2009, eBay buyers and sellers generated more than half a billion dollars of transactions via mobile, with strong momentum this holiday season.

Mobile deals
EBay launched the Deals application, providing iPhone and iPod touch owners with a constant stream of the best deals across hundreds of millions of eBay.com listings.

Available as a free download in the App Store, the Deals application features intuitive navigation, customizable search features and PayPal integration enabling mobile check-out.

EBay launched its first application for iPhone in July 2008 and ever since has continued to ramp up its mobile commerce initiatives.

EBay-owned online ticket marketplace StubHub went mobile in 2009. StubHub lets customers buy their tickets right up until the event, from their mobile phones.

PayPal
Ebay’s PayPal is really shaping the mobile commerce industry.

PayPal has its Send Money application for Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android handsets.

The PayPal application lets users send money to friends and family worldwide from their PayPal accounts.

Additionally, on Nov. 3 PayPal took a big step forward with the official opening of its platform to third-party developers.

Developers can now use PayPal’s global platform to incorporate a fast, easy and secure payment service into a wide range of applications, including mobile payments and micropayments.