Intuit iPhone-friendly Quicken priced at $3/month

By Jim Finkle

BOSTON (Reuters) - Intuit Inc is looking to boost Quicken personal finance software sales by offering it as a service for $3 a month that can run on Apple Inc's iPhone.

It hopes the product, which launches on January 8, will vastly expand Quicken's 14 million users and boost the market penetration of a brand that already generates about 1.7 million new copies of software a year, Intuit senior vice president Rick Jensen told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

Intuit has designed the product to appeal to younger consumers, people who may have used online banking for most of their adult lives, but do not use software to track those transactions.

"Our first mission is to make sure we are solving the needs of people who are not currently using a personal finance solution," he said.

Sales of the Quicken brand have basically been flat since peaking in 2001, but it has recently taken some business away from its only key rival, Microsoft Corp, according to market researcher NPD.

Quicken's U.S. market share rose to 80 percent in the first 11 months of this year from 72 percent in 2006. Microsoft Money's share of sales declined to 19 percent from 25 percent in the prior year, according to NPD.

NPD declined to provide specific dollar sales figures.

While Intuit does not release sales figures for Quicken, NPD says that, so far this year, the product has been selling at an average of $53.38. At that price, 1.7 million copies would ring up to about $91 million.