Mobile commerce is on a path similar to the one taken by ecommerce during its early years, but like good cutting edge technology should, it’s evolving much quicker. Remember those old shopping days at the mall, when you had to scribble down product info. on crumbled business cards, only to hop online when you got home to check for product reviews and cheaper prices? Then the world of ecommerce evolved such that people didn’t even go shopping at the mall anymore–they just stayed online to browse the hottest items via their trusted e-stores 
merchants.
Then mobile smart phones came along and made it easy to scan any coveted product, that might be dangling about like tasty apples in the bricks-and-mortar world, for instantaneous feedback (customer reviews, price comparison, etc.). That went on for a while, but soon enough ecommerce merchants came around and started upgrading their store sites to something more mobile friendly. When mobile shoppers learned they could EASILY buy product directly from ecommerce store sites, some merchants who had upgraded their stores to be mobile friendly began seeing huge increases in mobile commerce generated revenue (Titanium Jewelry experienced a 136% increase in mobile sales on their Yahoo! Mobile Store).
But even with mobile friendly stores available, mobile wasn’t a blessing for all merchants. Mobile shopping is still a very new phenomenon, still thought to be primarily useful as a technology assisted sales tool, or at best an easy way to buy low ticket items. However a May 17, 2011 CNET article titled: eBay Motors app: Buy a Bentley from your iPhone is a reminder that shoppers are trusting mobile commerce enough to buy whatever they can afford from the comfort of their three inch smart phone screens.
The implications of this are far-reaching: mobile shoppers won’t just be buying socks, games, rings, candy, music, etc. from their mobile phones, but they’ll see no difference between buying items they would have ten years ago visited a store to buy, and big ticket items like real estate, luxury cars, vacations, boats, planes, whatever! But don’t expect that to happen overnight: The average mobile phone shopper is still playing limbo with sub five to ten thousand dollar credit limits, but it’s encouraging to know it’s happening out there on some level.
Let us know what you think? Would you feel comfortable buying big ticket items from a handheld mobile smart phone device?
