The Internet is expanding at previously unpredicted rates.  So what’s the next big thing to hit the market?  You guessed it: Mobile Commerce and Entertainment. The reality is that E-Commerce is going mobile as the number of M-Commerce users grow at staggering rates.  Recent statistics out of India, our Silicone Valley of the East, predict that the number of worldwide participants in mobile commerce is set to expand from a mere 3 million in 2006 to more than 100 million by the end of the decade.  The best and the brightest out of Europe estimate their M-Commerce market to represent close to $10 Billion in 2006.

The market appeal of M-Commerce is no secret.  People prefer to do what they need to do at their convenience.  Mobile commerce allows internet users the opportunity to perform all E-Commerce functions wherever they go, whenever they want it.  Whether it’s making a credit payment, accessing an internet mobile store, paying a bill from a mobile market, getting their fill of mobile gaming by playing poker at an online casino, or even viewing adult content, you can now do it quickly and conveniently wherever you are from your mobile phone or other supported PDA.

Organizations like Paypal are at the cutting-edge of this technology.  Many years ago Paypal strategically recognized that E-Commerce had the potential of quickly shifting to M-Commerce such that retailers no longer had to wait for the customer to visit them; they could easily visit their customers wherever they were.  The result:  the number of Mobile Commerce internet transactions performed by processors like Paypal are increasing at a dizzying rate.

The growth of mobile devices, ranging from mobile phones to PDAs, far outshines any other communication media.  We are a society on the move such that mobile phones fit far better into our daily routines than the desktop could ever hope to.  For example, more than half of North Americans use a mobile phone.  The percentage of mobile phone users in the U.K. and Europe is many times greater than this.  Asia and India have the greatest number of mobile phone users in the world.  Research indicates that there will be more than 2 billion mobile phone users across the globe by the end of the decade.  This is why when E-Commerce growth started to slow at the turn of the millennium the real visionaries turned to M-Commerce.  Rather than forcing internet users to turn to their home computers or bulky laptops the way they used to have to turn to retail stores, mobile phones have brought M-Commerce capability to us.