Mobile commerce is one of the biggest opportunities companies will have to grow and innovate over the next two to three years. It’s a space in which even the smallest players can have a big impact. The reasons underpinning that are fairly obvious when you look at the amount of smart phones currently being sold. We reached a tipping point last year when smarthphones actually outsold PCs for the first time. Effectively as of the end of last year, we have a billion mobile devices connected to the internet. Add to that the fact that 4G is coming around the corner, which will also be a real injection into the arm. Anyone who has got a consumer business or the need to interact with people can see that the single easiest way to do that is going to be through the mobile phone and not through the emails and leaflets of old. Retailers should start taking advantage of this new channel. Businesses, particularly SMEs should be thinking about mobile as an avenue for them to be connecting to their target customers.

2011 saw mobile media use accelerate across markets, fueled by the popularity of smarthphones, the growing availability of WiFi paired with the proliferation of 3G and 4G wireless networks, and continuing shifts towards a constantly connected consumer lifestyle. A significant percentage of mobile users reported engaging with mobile media – which is defined as browsing the mobile web, accessing applications or downloading content – with penetration of this behaviour increasing 9.2 percentage points across the EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom) and 11.6 points in the United States.

Among the eight markets analyzed, Japan had the highest penetration of mobile media usage at 76.2 percent in December 2011. The UK followed with more than 56 percent of its mobile population using mobile media, having crossed the 50-percent threshold halfway through the year. Mobile media usage in the U.S. showed similar penetration of 55.2 percent, with more than half of mobile subscribers using mobile media at the beginning of Q3 2011. The strong rise in penetration of mobile media usage and continued adoption of different means of accessing digital content indicate significant opportunity for content creators, publishers and app developers.

One of the main issues that need to be sorted in order to engage a wider audience with mobile commerce is usability and customer experience. Some big companies are still struggling. They solve the problem from an engineering point of view but in fact the user experience is the issue. Mobile accounts for 10% of ecommerce website visits, but converts at nearly half the rate of PC visitors. Another barrier is the concern around security and data privacy. People still feel uncomfortable about security of mobile commerce.

According to a Shoppercentric study, consumers may not be adopting mobile payment technology as readily as expected because of security concerns. The study, shopping in a Multichannel World, revealed that customers still favour in-store experiences over emerging mobile options. Just 13 percent of shoppers reported using smarthphones for shopping in the past month, while only 7 percent used tablets and an overwhelming 87 percent visited brick-and-mortar locations. Respondents cited security concerns as a primary reason for preferring in-store shopping. Less than 30 percent of shoppers believe that online payments made via smarthphones are secure. Additionally, consumers credited slow internet connections, poor network coverage and the inability to interact with products as reasons for preferring retail stores.

Retailers can address customers' security concerns by providing high-quality fraud management for online payment processing and data storage. Consumers want a very open and transparent explanation about what the companies are doing with security and data privacy and they want them in plain English and in plain sight, right up front - not buried in the terms and agreement.

They want to see third party certification. As in the early days of the internet when you had a lock in the corner and that was a sign that it was a safe site, they want to see something similar, a stamp or kite-mark that signals the same kind of security.

Lastly, companies really need to be careful with their brand and make sure they don’t breech anything. It doesn’t matter how blue chip you are, the minute you do something wrong you can really suffer and if you get it wrong once you’ll never get it back.