April 1 2004

Mobile commerce has taken off and m-commerce services are poised to grow rapidly, according to a study from Telecom Trends International released Thursday, April 1.

The study, titled "Mobile Commerce Takes Off," takes an in-depth look at mobile commerce growth globally. It says that while successful mobile commerce deployments today mostly focus on digital content, there is a growing movement toward a wider range of m-commerce transactions.

"M-commerce is not just e-commerce gone mobile—it's much more—and it will become a serious part of the global economy," Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, author of the study, told TelecomWeb. "Since people carry their cell phones everywhere, cell phones will eventually start to replace wallets as a place to store credit cards, frequent shopper cards, and even family photos."

According to the study, there were 94.9 million mobile commerce users in 2003 who will grow to 1.67 billion users by 2008. Revenues from mobile commerce will grow globally from $6.86 billion in 2003 to over $554.37 billion in 2008.

Digital content, although evolving in nature to include more multimedia, will retain a large percentage of total sales, the study said, while tangible goods (purchased remotely or at point-of-sale) and interactive-type transactions will continue to increase.

M-commerce is taking off due to a confluence of three major developments: (1) rollout of packet-data networks; (2) availability of enhanced data devices, and (3) development of rich content for m-commerce applications, according to Naqi Jaffery, president, Telecom Trends International.