Multi-channel m-Commerce
Gartner has an interesting press release relating to m-commerce. The key finding to come out of their research is that…
"Consumers are more likely to shop rather than to buy from a mobile phone"
People want to use the mobile phone to compare prices, find products and stores. However, most currently don’t want to pay via the phone. This reminds me of the Internet say ten years ago when many people were too frightened to purchase on the Internet. Now nearly everyone does it.
Looking more short term, the following also provides some insights…
"M-commerce technology vendors should differentiate themselves by providing multichannel capabilities, such as enabling mobile-phone-generated orders to be picked up in a store or allowing consumers to save mobile-phone-created shopping sessions to be later continued on a Web browser,"
I believe transparent multi-channel (web, PC, phone) access provides many real opportunities for mobile entrepreneurs, not just in m-commerce but in other areas such as syncing contact/calendars, mobile music/video, messaging, search, camera (imaging) and even TV.
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