Is Mobile Commerce at a Tipping Point?

Mobile commerce is in a hype cycle, with high expectations for growth. The issue is whether it is at a tipping point, the point of critical mass where an adoption inflection point occurs, and "overnight," it seems, a new trend gets established. 

You should expect to hear lots of speculation about mobile commerce, mobile payments or mobile wallet efforts reaching a critical mass or tipping point in 2012, as it is the time of year for attention-grabbing predictions. What is a tipping point?

You should remain circumspect. Something big is coming. But it still is "coming," it is not going to be "here" in 2012. 

The 2011 KPMG Mobile Payments Outlook, based on a survey of nearly 1,000 executives primarily in the financial services, technology, telecommunications, and retail industries globally found that 83 percent of the respondents believe that mobile payments will be mainstream within four years (by 2015).

In fact, 46 percent believe mobile payments will be mainstream within two years.

But there is room to disagree about the accuracy of those projections. One might argue that forecasts of this sort are notoriously unreliable, with respondents overestimating near term prospects.

Analysts at Gartner, for example, use a model of how expectations for significant new technologies running in a predictable cycle. What the cycle suggests is that expectations nearly always (always, according to the model) run ahead of marketplace acceptance.

What the Gartner hype cycle suggests is that expectations for mobile payments using near field communications are at a point where we can expect five to 10 years to elapse until NFC actually begins to make serious inroads as an adopted mainstream technology. The emphasis probably is important to note: “begins.”

But KPMG analysts take the opposite view, arguing that respondents are too pessimistic. “We believe that exploding smart phone growth and myriad opportunities will grow mobile payments at a much faster rate than our respondents anticipate,” said Gary Matuszak, KPMG Global Chair of the Technology, Communication and Entertainment practice.

“While KPMG believes that these forms of mobile payment will all gain some traction, our view is that mobile wallet is one of the most exciting and promising payment opportunities,” analysts say.

Mobile wallet provides the momentum to move beyond payments to participate in the entire chain of mobile commerce, from consideration and brand awareness to purchase after-sales loyalty and care,” said Tudor Aw, Technology Sector Head, KPMG Europe.
Banks, mobile service providers have key roles in mobile payment

If Gartner analysts are right about the near field communications "hype cycle," we should soon see some public "disillusionment" expressed about near term prospects for NFC. The reason is that Gartner now sees NFC at the "top" of its hype cycle, the point at which overly-optimistic projections face the reality of an extended period of development, before something "useful" actually emerges.

Internet TV, NFC payment and private cloud computing all are at what Garner calls the "Peak of Inflated Expectations," which is always followed by a period where the hype is viewed as outrunning the actual market. That suggests NFC soon will enter a phase where expectations are more measured.

In fact, Gartner now expects it will take five to 10 years before NFC is in widespread and mainstream use. Gartner's latest expectation likewise is that cloud computing and machine-to-machine applications will not be mainstream for another five to 10 years as well. Gartner's 2011 Hype Cycle

Consider some of the issues that will have to be settled before mobile commerce can reach a tipping point. First, the communication methods need to settle, whether NFC or other approaches are considered. 

Carrier billing could play a crucial role in how consumers start easing into the idea of mobile commerce, but mobile service providers will have to revise traditional pricing, as a payment scheme costing more than a credit card or debit card charge will not work, especially for small ticket purchases, where carrier billing seems most germane. 

Many of us believe "daily deals" are crucial, as a key source of new value for mobile wallet services that answer the question of "what's in it for me?" for both consumers and retailers. Right now, most mobile payment systems cannot provide simple answers for retailers and consumers.

Then there are all the privacy issues related to personalization and location-based targeting, which are certainly going to grow in importance.  Top 7 Mobile Commerce Trends in 2011:

Media, Voice, Mobile, Broadband Tipping Points

In a historic first, online media companies collectively will sell more ads in local markets this year than such individual hometown media as newspapers, broadcasters and yellow pages, says Borrell Associates. That's a tipping point, a stage of development when critical mass for some new phenomenon is reached.

Five years ago business phone systems hit a tipping point: most new systems were IP-capable. A couple years ago another tipping point was reached and new phone systems mostly are IP-only. These days most new phone sales are for IP systems.

Likewise, Internet usage and access hit similar tipping points earlier this decade. Most people now use the Internet, and that wasn't true 10 years ago. Also, there was a tipping poin when broadband caught and then surpassed dial-up access as the dominant access medium.

Then there was some tipping point reached where access speeds accelerated beyond the "affordable mass access in the hundreds of kilobits per second range" to "affordable mass access in the megabits per second range."

You can see tipping points for text messaging and mobile phone use as well, even though it is only within the last decade that most people started carrying mobile phones and only within the last five years that most younger users began texting heavily, dragging older users along with them.

One watches for tipping points for all sorts of practical reasons, including evidence that it now is time to restructure the way marketing, sales, production, business models, distribution, industrial design, menus and all sorts of very practical things get done.

And the point is that all media are approaching tipping points of their own, and for reasons largely analogous to how communications is changing because of Moore's Law, IP, peer-to-peer, cheap storage, optical fiber, wireless and Web services.

In the newspaper local advertising area, a new tipping point appears to have been reached.

Online-only media companies will have claimed 43.7 percent of the $8.5 billion spent in 2007 on local advertising, usurping the long-time lead of newspapers. While newspapers three years ago controlled 44.1 percent of the local market, they will capture only 33.4 percent of sales this year.

The growth of the online media companies “came mainly at the expense of newspapers and yellow pages publishers,” who have lost a combined 19.6 points of local advertising share in the last three years, says Borrell.

Having spent some time working at newspapers, as well as at publishing companies with multiple products, a concrete way to view tipping points is the impact on structuring of sales forces.

Typically, newspapers and other local media try to build their online businesses by selling new media to their legacy customers. Sometimes they try to use a single sales force to sell online and legacy products. That doesn't work, long term.

In fact, it doesn't quite work even short term, as sales forces direct their behavior to where they can make the most money, and that never is in the emerging businesses.

So one winds up with a strategy akin to launching a Boeing 777 into the air by rolling forward slowly on a long runway. No matter what you do, you crash at the end, because there never is enough runway if you don't get your airspeed up pretty quickly.

Companies that rely on their legacy sales forces to sell the new products--even though it seems logical--will crash their planes at the end of the runway. The only way to succeed is to cut the cord. Build separate sales teams with separate incentive structures; not "converged" sales teams.

One does not "incrementally" jump a very wide ditch. One leaps. One makes it or not. But it can't be done incrementally and slowly.