A little bit more meat on the bones of Kayak's news yesterday that it will be launching a significant new proposition in 2010 with booking functionality for users of its iPhone application.
Reaction yesterday concentrated on a number of key themes, most of which chief marketing officer Robert Birge was happy to answer on a call today.
One of the significant points raised yesterday is now Kayak's strategic difference from other metasearch players - or relative closeness to an online travel agency - given that it will be taking the credit cards details of customers and buying the product on their behalf.
Birge is adamant that Kayak is still a metasearch engine ("media company", as he calls it) first and foremost and the addition of what seems to some is a fundamentally and strategically different proposition is just an obvious way to tackle the "friction" users experience when searching and then booking on a mobile device.
"We are providing them [users] a tool for them to have booking as a service on their mobiles," he says.
Given chief executive Steve Hafner's comments over the years about online travel agencies, some might argue that the messaging with regards to this change, at least from an industry perspective, is probably quite important and ironic.
Despite the denial of a move toward OTAland - the semantics of the development will no doubt be debated for months ahead - the realisation that handling user credit card information creates lots of issues.
PCI compliance, as mentioned yesterday, is a key area that needs to be tackled long before the new functionality (it's officially called Wallet) appears on the app itself - scheduled for a Q1 launch in 2010.
Birge, however, admits that the finer details of how this will be addressed are still be finalised, adding briefly: "We of course understand that it's something that we need to handle - and also handle it well."
In terms of the rollout of the service and business logistics of launch, Birge says the app will be available across all markets "where we have a meaningful business", primarily meaning North America and some European markets such as the UK.
However, Kayak is hoping the new app will reinvigorate its somewhat stuttering presence in Europe over the years, where it lags behind a number of significant players such as EasyVoyage, Travelsupermarket, Skyscanner amongst others.
Birge says the need to do some innovative and interesting things in mobile was demonstrated by the realisation that iPhone was Kayak's third largest browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox, and accounts for roughly 5% of all search volumes.
This is expected to increase as more users adopt 3G handsets.
[Interestingly, Kayak's research found there is no difference at all in how people search for flights or hotels in terms of time scale, countering the argument that mobile search is more likely on those looking for last-minute fares or rooms.]
Kayak currently has online display and text advertising running across its site, accounting for a significant amount of its overall revenues, anything up to a 60-40 split in favour of revenues from referrals versus advertising.
Although users of the mobile apps (600,000 downloads of the iPhone version, plus 50,000 Blackerry and some Android) are mostly new customers ("we have not cannibalised the website"), Kayak will eventually put advertising on the mobile apps to counteract any tail-off from users no longer clicking on the web ads.
Finally, Birge recognises that frequent flyer functionality is an important part of any air booking facility, and stresses its importance emphatically if without much detail.
"That's obviously critical functionality, so that will be handled out of the gate."
Meanwhile, Kayak's controversial TV ads may well have an addition to their ranks to support the Wallet tool on the new app. TBC, Birge says.