• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, October 10, 2012

Call it the Internet dividend. Consumers' willingness to embrace making payments and buying goods via their phones is on a much steeper adoption curve than we witnessed with the Web in the 1990s. In fact, supply rather than demand may be the major limiting factor here, one noted mobile analyst suggests.

According to Juniper Research, the number of people making purchases of physical goods with their devices will expand from 393 million this year to 580 million by the end of 2014. This near 50% growth is being driven by consumer confidence in these personal devices as reliable payment and shopping mechanisms, report author Windsor Holden says. “Mobile is not only another channel,” he writes in the report, “but also the channel of the future.”

The amounts of revenue involved are already huge, with transaction value of $254 worldwide just this year. But Juniper argues that mobile transactions involving physical goods will reach $730 billion by 2017. The annual rate of growth will be 23%, according to this projection.

For now, 70% of mobile transactions are occurring in the North American, Far East and China markets. But Juniper still sees sharp growth rates occurring in the forecast period to 2017, despite maturity in some markets. China will see 15% annual growth in m-commerce, for instance, but the Indian subcontinent will see 50% expansion annually.

The main constraint on mobile commerce for the time being is on the supply -- not the demand -- side, Holden contends. Too many retailers are not optimizing their sites for the full shopping cycle, from browsing to user registration to payment. “Consumers increasingly expect to be able to buy their products and services via their smartphones and tablet,” Holden says. “Companies which do not offer these options face falling behind their competitors.”

MediaPost will be taking up this exact topic -- from m-payments, to mobile retail site design, showrooming to next-generation technologies in the store -- at the October 22 special edition of OMMA Mobile focused on M-Commerce. "The Age of the Pocket Point-of-Sale Begins" event will be held in Los Angeles and will feature keynotes from American Express, Verizon Wireless and Keurig.