Christmas is coming... and m-commerce is ready to get fat

As Christmas approaches, I am getting very excited. I can’t hardly sleep for anticipation. I pace. I fiddle. I can’t concentrate. No, not because I am counting down the days until Santa arrives at Telemedia Towers, but because soon, very soon, the deluge of predictions as to how much commerce will be done on mobile around Christmas are but days away from deluging my in box.

It’s my favourite time of year. Everyone, usually, gets very carried away about how much shopping people are going to do over mobile this year compared to last and how the mobile retail revolution is upon us. It validates me and makes me not feel like such a dork for doing all my Christmas shopping on my phone for the fourth year running. I am, it makes me feel, not alone.

But while I wait, Verdict Research has looked into how much commerce is going to be done via mobile by 2017 and concluded that, in its words, “m-commerce is set to grow a whopping 504% between now and 2017 – resulting in almost £1 in every £4 spent online being through a mobile device in 2017”.

What? Only 25% of online shopping being done on mobile by 2017? Really? Already there are more smartphones in the US than normal phones (51%, a milestone reached this week) and sales of smartphones and tablets combined are likely next year to outstrip PC sales. By 2017, the way everyone will connect to the web will be via a smartphone, a tablet, or some sort of combination of the two (a smablet?). Now, a lot of this will be via wifi, but is it still mobile or is it online?

In fact, it doesn’t matter. It will all be digital commerce and by 2017 I don’t think any organization is going to really care where the sale comes from, so long as it comes.

What I think we will find is that most ‘e-commerce’ will be initiated from something running what we think of today as a mobile OS, and so, even if its running off wifi via a tablet on someones’s desk (or even a laptop come to that) its m-commerce.

What Verdict’s findings overlook is the natural convergence that is happening between devices, networks, operating systems and people’s habits. Touch screen devices – smartphones, iPads, Andriod tabs, even the Surface – all offer a much better user interface than desktops. They are also cheaper, more flexible and convenient. They are going to be the mass market tool for web access in 2017 (if not long before – I reckon they are already well on their way to being so, as Christmas data will reveal: the reason I am so excited).

What Verdict does get right (well, sort of) is that it believes that consumers will use mobile to research what they want to buy, but won’t actually purchase through mobile because, they don’t feel comfortable transacting through mobile.

Here, the researchers have a point – up to a point. Right now there is some consumer wariness about paying using mobile payments. But there are two things wrong with this argument.

Firstly, most commerce transacted through mobile devices can be done through PayPal, iTunes, or sites that have stored card details. It is not different to online shopping in that regard – its just a different device.

Secondly, mobile payments that actually use mobile are already starting to gain consumer trust here in 2012. Thanks to charity donation initiatives, the rise of Payforit and the use of in-app payments for gamers, gamblers and consumers of adult are starting to get people using m-payments. Initiatives underway by everyone from banks to retailers to network operators are going to see the use of m-payments rocket – not by 2017 but during 2013.

I believe that by 2017, mobile will be THE payment tool of choice for most people.

So, while I am excited about Christmas and all the positive reinforcement I am going to get from the analysis, I am also looking forward very much to Christmas 2017 (only 1825 sleeps away!) to be proved right: everything will be mobile and your kids will marvel at how ‘online’ used to be accessed from a big box that sat on a table.

Happy mobile shopping!