Leading US retailers are this year expanding their Christmas sales drive by targeting smartphone users through the new generation of mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone, the Palm Pre and BlackBerry's Storm.

Retailers that have started selling online via smartphones this year include mass discounters Walmart and Kmart, lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret, home goods store Crate & Barrel, and youth clothing chains American Eagle and Urban Outfitters.

Others, including JC Penney, Target, Gap and Toys R Us have launched smartphone applications, or apps, that promote deals alongside services such as helping customers locate physical stores or check the availability of items.

Raul Vazquez, chief executive of Walmart.com, said the group's new iPhone app, which was released in November and is linked to its home electronics sales, had so far been downloaded more than 300,000 times.

“We expect by the end of the year to get that number up to 1m,” he said of the app, which includes a feature that allows shoppers to fit a profile of a proposed TV purchase on to a photo of a wall or room.

Jason Taylor, head of mobile products at Usablenet, which adapts websites to make them easily navigable by mobile devices, said his company had this month launched “around a dozen” new mobile sites for leading retailers, including office-supplies retailer Staplesand cosmetics company Aveda.Outdoor goods store REI, and OfficeMax, another office supplies retailer, are also planning to open mobile commerce sites.

“I see a real rush by retailers to have proper mobile channels,” said Mr Taylor.

The growing US demand for mobile commerce was underlined last month by Ebay, the online auction site, which announced that about $400m of merchandise had been sold through its iPhone app so far this year. Ebay said some 4.6m people had downloaded the app.