Virtual Zippo Lighter, a free, branded application available in Apple’s iTunes App Store has just passed a major milestone, with 5 million downloads since its launch about a year ago.

Zippo Manufacturing and mobile content company Moderati have said that they will soon be extending its reach with releases in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, plus a premium version of the virtual lighter.

The Virtual Zippo Lighter brings the look and feel of Zippo’s iconic lighter to the iPhone by taking advantage of several of the built-in iPhone features such as accelerometers, microphone and speaker:

• it opens with a flick of the wrist, with sound effects,
• it lights with a turn of the flint wheel,
• and if you blow at your iPhone or move it back and forth, the “windproof flame” sways realistically.

The Virtual Zippo is currently free, but the company will be launching a premium version this fall for $0.99 that will enable users to greatly personalize their virtual lighters.

This app ranks in the top 20 iPhone apps of all time according to Comscore. “If you were to tell us how popular the Virtual Zippo app would be twelve months ago, we would have told you that you flipped your lighter lid” jokes Pat Grandy, Marketing Communications Manager at Zippo, “but the results speak for themselves.”

“It’s amazing to go to a concert anywhere in the U.S. and see Zippo lighters – both real and virtual – waving from the crowd”, stated Moderati CEO Jon Vlassopulos.