Jackie Taranto, Managing Director of the region’s largest business event, CeBIT Australia, believes mCommerce will open new doors for retailers as mobile and tablet device users are both plentiful and demographically diverse.

“Consumers use mobile and wireless devices as part of their day-to-day life. The technology that is now available to owners of these devices has paved the way for unique brand experiences when utilised appropriately by organisations,” said Ms. Taranto.

Photo Credit: Neerav Bhatt (Creative Commons)

Despite the hype surrounding the m-commerce revolution, some consumers have concerns about the regulation of these devices and what it means for the protection of their identity and finances.

“Converging media always poses new threats and challenges for providers and consumers. The difficulty will be maintaining the proper degree of regulation as the technology continues to improve” said Ms. Taranto.

“Customers now demand 24/7 marketplaces and the next 12 months will see more and more retailers using m-commerce to ensure customers can buy, whenever, wherever.”

Near Field Communications (NFC)

While there are many new technologies which can help make mCommerce easier, Near Field Communications (NFC) is one technology that has attracted a lot of attention.

According to Mobileburn:

“NFC is a short range wireless RFID technology that makes use of interacting electromagnetic radio fields instead of the typical direct radio transmissions used by technologies such as Bluetooth. It is meant for applications where a physical touch, or close to it, is required in order to maintain security. NFC is planned for use in mobile phones for, among other things, payment, in conjunction with an electronic wallet, and for setting up connections between Bluetooth devices (rendering the current manual Bluetooth pairing process obsolete). The technology is promoted by the NFC-Forum.”

The NFC Forum says that their technology has the power to bring new simplicity and convenience to many aspects of a typical person’s daily life, as this example illustrates:

At present according to Tapit these are the mobile phones currently sold in the Australian market which support NFC: Samsung Galaxy Nexus S, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy SII 4G, Sony Xperia S, HTC One X 4G, Prada Phone by LG 3.0, Nokia N9, Nokia C7, Blackberry Bold 9900, Blackberry Curve 9360.

For NFC mobile phone payment systems to be adopted by Australian retailers there will have to be a more critical mass of smartphones being used by the public that all reliably support NFC to the same extent