ABI Research’s study on the prevalence and popularity of mCommerce has thrown up some interesting facts:

•USD 119 billion worth of products and services will be purchased via a mobile phone in 2015.

•The value of mobile commerce services trebled in the year 2009 in the United States.

These figures surely point to the fact that m commerce finds favor amongst mobile phone users and retailers and that this medium of commercial transaction is here to stay. And as market researchers delve more into this emerging phenomenon, they discover the trends that are ruling the eCommerce realm.

Here are the top 5 trends in mobile commerce that have ruled roost in 2010:

•Investment: FitForCommerce research findings predict that retailers, on an average, will invest about USD 170,000 on their mobile sites this year. And following the pattern of technology investments, retailers who do business on a large scale will be investing more than this amount.

This spurt in investment is because retailers perceive mCommerce to be a lucrative business channel. Statistical findings too don’t refute their beliefs—according to Digby, a mobile commerce software platform, many retailers have indeed witnessed higher purchase rates when they come up with offers that are posted exclusively on their mobile web sites.

•Mobile Couponing: Exposure2 findings have confirmed the hunch that retailers have all along been harboring—paper coupons are losing out to their mobile counterparts when compared for redemption rates. In fact, the redemption rates for mobile coupons are often more than 50% while paper coupons manage to notch only 0.2 to 2% redemption rates. It is thus not surprising that mobile coupons are increasingly being used by retailers and also advertisers to drive businesses.

•Location: Location-based marketing is slated to be the most popular trend in mCommerce, especially during the festive season. Retailers and especially those who operate on a large scale, are already harnessing the power of an ecommerce platform to facilitate "check-in" via the mobile phone and reveal their specific geographic locations.

•Social: Barnes & Noble has initiated a mCommerce trend—using the mobile phone for sharing resources— that has caught on like wildfire. They let their customers share their books with friends for up to 14 days, using an Android application. This trend has in fact, led to the emergence of social network-based loyalty programs and these are expected to gain in popularity during the festive season.

•Analytics: The success of an ecommerce platform rests on a retailer’s ability to figure out what strategies click and what do not. The year 2010 it seems, has ushered in revolutionary trends in the mCommerce realm. For this is the first time that retailers have begun focusing on and investing in analytics. The demand is particularly intensified during festive seasons when they wish to offer all the important features of eCommerce.

Recognizing these mCommerce trends, Web Spiders has come up with a nifty solution—cart2mobile. It is a mobile catalog and mCommerce system that has the ability to integrate with an existing eCommerce platform to provide retailers with a mobilized version of their eCommerce infrastructure.