M-Commerce – Mobile commerce and looking ahead

For a little over a year now I have heard progressively more about m-commerce, or retails sales made over the browser incorporated into cell phones, Blackberrys, pda’s, etc. The trend has already caught on well in countries like Japan with $10B in sales in 2006. In the US, large scale m-commerce continues to be a distant concept.

From the mounting buzz, this seems poised to change. As screen resolutions become better, as connectivity speeds increase, more people are using their cell phones for browsing on-line. In business school, this was a favorite activity: browse CNN while waiting on the class to get interesting. Back in 2004 that was crazy to me, but now this is becoming much more common. Companies like mPoria are centered around the emerging market and a solid trend toward more mobile based buying, and especially advertising, is developing.

As a merchant, this is not something I would be obsessed about just yet. However, there is a tide coming in and mobile commerce seems to be on it’s way.

July 24th, 2007