When E-commerce started to spring up, a lot of people thought that traditionnal retailer would have a great competitive advantage as they owned store with high traffic to propose delivery and added value to online shopping. But one of the reason why it did not work that well at first was the way retailer was seeing the online store of the company: It was stealing some business from them, and on top of that they had to deal with the dirty work: after sales service, returns of non working products, the cost of stocks when people did not come to pick up their goods.
For mobile commerce it is even more true. Mobile commerce is 100% part of a ubiquitous shopper. One shopper may use its mobile added to different kind of channels, such as traditionnal stores, a computer, or maybe even a call center. That way, to link a sale to an activity on a mobile phone is difficult. And the perception of the return on investment of mobile commerce is difficult to get.
Mobile commerce is growing fast though represent a limited share of the overal commerce, in most industries where it exists yet. But it is important to have in mind that the mobile phone will be the ultimate tool to link all the other communication and sale channels.
