How to do it...

Follow these steps:

Inside your Magento Admin Panel, navigate to Mobile | Manage Apps on the main menu.
Click on the Add App button in the top-right corner. The New App screen will be shown.
Since we have to create a separate application for each mobile device type, let's choose our first targeted platform.

Under the Device Type list, we can choose iPad, iPhone, or Android.

For the purpose of this recipe, since the procedure is almost the same for all device types, I will choose Android.
After choosing the desired Device Type, click on the Continue button, and click on the General tab under Manage Mobile App.
First we have to fill in the box named App Name. Choose an appropriate name for your mobile application and insert it there.
Under the Store View list, make sure to choose our earlier defined Store View with updated mobile theme exceptions, our mobile copyright information, and category thumbnail images.
Set the Catalog Only App option to No.
Click on the Save and Continue Edit button in the top-right corner of the screen.
Now you will notice a warning message from Magento that says something like the following:

Please upload an image for "Logo in Header" field from Design Tab.

Please upload an image for "Banner on Home Screen" field from Design Tab.

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Don't worry, Magento expects us to add some basic images that we prepared for our mobile app. So let's add them.
Click on the Design tab on the left-hand side of the screen.
Locate the Logo in Header label and click on the Browse... button on the right to upload the prepared small header logo image. Make sure to upload the image with proper dimensions for the selected device type (iPhone, iPad, or Android).
In the same way, click on the Browse... button on the right of the Banner on Home Screen label and choose the appropriate prepared and resized banner image.
Now, let's click on the Save and Continue Edit button in order to save our settings.

How it works

For each device type, we will have to create a new Magento Mobile application in our Magento Mobile Admin Panel.

When we once select Device Type and click on the Save button, we are unable to change Device Type later for that application.

If we have chosen the wrong Device Type, the only solution is to delete this app and to create a new one with the proper settings.

The same applies with our chosen Store View when configuring new app.

There's more...

When our configuration is saved for the first time, auto-generated App Code will appear on the screen and that will be the code which will uniquely identify our Device Type—the assigned application to be properly recognized with Magento Mobile.

For example, defand1 means that this application is the first defined application for the default Store View targeted on android (def = default store view, and=android).

How to use mobile application as catalog only

Under step 7 we set Catalog Only App to No, but sometimes, if we don't need checkout and payment in our mobile app, but we want to use it just as catalog to show products to our mobile customers, we just need to set the Catalog Only option to Yes.