Another major retailer is going all in on beacons. Deep inside a series of announcements by Macy's yesterday about its omnichannel strategy is another major nod to beacons. Following beacon trials in New York and San Francisco, Macy's is expanding its beacon program to all stores nationwide, with the installation of more than 4,000 beacons in its stores.

The accuracy of location data has improved substantially recently with ads for mobile shopping now approaching location perfection. Those are among the latest finding in a quarterly location tracking benchmark study that analyzes how well targeted ads are at reaching consumers at the right place. This matters a lot for mobile commerce, since an ad targeted to a shopper's phone near a certain store may not matter much if the person is really nowhere near that store.

Beacons are going big. While many retailers, agencies and brands have been experimenting with beacons for many months, the growth of the small transmitting devices into the marketplace continues. It turns out that almost one in five mobile marketers already are using Apple's iBeacons, with that number projected to double to more than a third next year, based on a new study.

Mobile shopping may not have any great age barriers. It turns out that older shoppers are comfortable using their phones to shop, with a fourth (25%) of mobile shoppers in the U.S. being 55 or older, based on a new study.

Mobile payments are starting to get serious. Besides some larger iPhones and cool new watches, Apple's major foray into mobile payments yesterday will have the most significant impact on mobile commerce. This is not to say that the masses of consumers will quickly ditch their credit and debit cards and move to mobile payments just because it can be done with the new iPhone 6.

Mobile is finally beating the desktop for shopping at retailer websites. We've seen this coming for some time in a monthly mobile tracking study we've been following for some time. For the first time, more than half (51%) of visits to retailers' websites came from mobile devices, according to a new report.

Apple's latest announcements today could be a boon to mobile commerce. The company is noted for introducing technology that changes consumer behavior. ITunes music purchasing and passbook aggregation, such as of airline boarding passes, are a couple of examples.

More routine shopping activity is migrating to mobile. As consumers continuously shop throughout The Mobile Shopping Life Cycle, various actions that have been done one way for a long time are gradually being transformed and automated, thanks to mobile technology.

Mobile coupons are on the rise, which should come as no surprise. This is hardly to say paper coupons are dying, though the economics would imply they should be. A mailed coupon costs a brand or retailer 25 cents, a printed newspaper coupon costs about 5 cents and a coupon that a consumer prints at home costs a retailer pretty much nothing, based on a recent study by Juniper Research.

Maybe mobile payments aren't moving along as quickly as some might like, but at least some of the major players behind the scenes are active in creating new names for their ventures. A few weeks back, the leadership of Isis, the unfortunate initial name of the joint venture of the major phone carriers Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, announced it would change its name.