Meebo’s long overdue iPhone App is live in the App Store.

It promises to bring a shake up in simplicity and elegance to the IM marketplace, whether that is in fact the case, remains to be seen.

Initial comments and reviews have been positive. With the ability to login with your Meebo account, no ads, all the major IM services (Skype aside) available, push notifications, a crisp clean UI and above all else, zero cost – it’s not difficult to see why this should be gain some traction.

My first impressions weren’t quite so positive. After attempting to sign up with Meebo and completing its form, the app crashed on me forcing me to repeat the process. That said, once I was able to login, Meebo’s welcoming UI is indeed an improvement on many of the messenger apps out there. Navigating the app is also notably simple and despite never having been a fan of the Meebo.com UI, it’s evident someone has spent a great deal of time getting this iPhone app right.

Nevertheless, this app is late, very late. Whether the “better late than never” mentality will work in Meebo’s favour, we’ll find out over the coming weeks. Amsterdam based EBuddy is the current app store leader in the multi-messenger IM space followed by IM+ and Beejive. SMS replacement apps What’sApp and Ping have also proven themselves to be very popular and rank high on the App Store rankings.

Download Meebo from the App Store here, it’s free.