Catalog aggregator web site Catalogs.com has taken 30 of its 675 retailer clients’ catalogs to the iPad, creating an interactive experience for brands with an eye on reducing the number of paper catalogs shoppers request. And it plans to bring more of its retailers to the iPad on a daily basis.

“With Catalogs.com for iPad, you’ll be shopping like never before, flipping through pages of your favorite catalogs. It’s like having a coffee table full of catalogs, all on your iPad, wherever you go,” says president and co-founder Richard Linevsky. “With the new Catalogs.com app for the iPad, you’ll also find exclusive savings including free shipping, discounts and many other specials.”

Catalogs.com charges merchants a fee to be listed on its site and included in the iPad app. It takes a retailer’s product data feed and creates a catalog per the client’s design; because e-catalogs are based on live product data feeds, catalog content can be changed at any time.

Catalogs live on the iPad app today include MacConnection, The Home Depot Inc., PetcoAnimal Supplies Inc., Little Tikes and Spiegel.

The app allows users to turn pages with a fingertip, just like with a traditional catalog. But unlike a paper catalog, shoppers can zoom in on products for details, tap to buy a product from a retailer’s  e-commerce store, or build a personal wish list from multiple catalogs all in one place. If a shopper wishes to buy more than one product from a catalog, she returns to the Catalogs.com app after placing a product in a retailer’s shopping cart. Through the use of cookies, the retailer’s e-commerce site remembers the individual shopper coming from the iPad app and can maintain a shopping cart for that shopper.

“We wanted to deliver an incredibly innovative approach to the world of catalogs, to allow the customer to touch their favorite products and bring the shopping experience home,” says Linevsky. “We didn’t just take our well-known web site offerings to the iPad, but rather developed the new Catalogs.com for iPad app from the ground up.”

Whether this kind of shopping on the iPad qualifies as mobile commerce is up for debate. Some companies and consumers do not consider the iPad a truly mobile device as it typically is not taken everywhere like a smartphone. And, more important, the iPad app in this case is taking shoppers to e-commerce sites, not m-commerce sites. Other businesses consider the iPad part of mobile commerce and account for sales from an iPad in their m-commerce channel.