Mobile Retailing - FREE M-tailing Conference in London, Feb 5th 2008

Mobile Retailing Has Arrived! The Multi-Channel retail landscape is shifting again, and is soon to enter one of the largest phases of change since the launch of the Web. Mobile Retailing is on the horizon, and already there are signs that the m-commerce market is about to move from being mobile content/entertainment related only, (such as ringtones), to actual retail products. Free 1 Day Conference in London. Speakers include O2, Google, Mobiqa, WIN, Dialogue, and M-metrics - Read on...


There are good reasons to be excited. Unlike any other channel, mobile will allow retailers to get closer to the end-user than ever before, in their hand in fact, and present to them with a range of products and services ideally suited for that particular person. Personalisation will jump to a whole new level.


The figures are hard to ignore:

- Mobile ownership in the UK, representing the number of unique mobile owners as opposed to actual accounts, has passed 43 million, or 82 % of the population.
- It is predicted that by 2011 just under half of all mobile subscribers worldwide (that’s more than a billion people) will use mobile browsing, facillitated by new offerings from operators such as T-Mobile’s Web n Walk and 3’s X-series services.
- Mobile phone users in the UK accessed the internet on their handsets around 15.9 million times in December 2006.
- You can already surf, blog, shop, watch TV, gamble, and search on your phone.
- Huge mobile internet communities generating over 5 million impressions per day are operating with tens of thousands of members.
- Brands such as Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Ebay already making firm inroads into mobile.
- Large brands are already running ad campaigns on mobile.
- Payment options to purchase goods over your mobile are now secure and user friendly.
- The Mobile Internet is becoming more accessible and, much cheaper for the user.
- Mobile owners are getting to grips with the more advanced features on handsets, beyond SMS.


Mobile has very quickly turned from an early adopter toy to a massive media playground. Is it at all realistic to think that retailers will not take advantage of this highly targeted market place, particularly now that the infrastructure seems to be finally in place to make a mobile retail channel viable?


Driven by a seemingly insatiable consumer appetite for personalisation and entertainment content on mobile, companies that provide the platforms that deliver premium content to mobile phones earned a tasty share of the $16.3 billion mobile premium content market in 2006. These same companies are now beginning to look at the possibility of opening their doors non-mobile products.


The Opportunity


The mobile-content market initially was driven by the consumer desire to personalize their wireless communications experience. Over the last 2 years consumers have moved from having the opportunity to personalise their handsets, they also wanted to be entertained. The probable next phase is convenience – what can a consumer do, and more importantly buy, from their handset to not only save time, but to also make that impulse purchase. These market factors will see mobile retail seamlessly join up with other retail channels over the coming years.


The most noticeable change already taking place is in music - The mobile music market (including ringtones, ringtunes, full-track downloads, streaming and ringback tones) was $7.1 billion in 2006 and Gartner predicts Global Mobile Music Market Will Soar, Over US$32 Billion By 2010. This is set to spread into other retail sectors.


M-Tailing faces a number of challenges and has already hit a few stumbling blocks. Whilst payments for digital content 'on-portal' continue to function, the growth in off-portal content and the migration to the mobile web will open up the market to other players. Google and eBay are both vying hungrily for this space. Using the mobile as a vector for physical payments, however, has proven more complex and whilst the technology, in terms of Near Field Communications chips embedded in handsets, is readily available, it has been a struggle to prove demand outside of the Far East. Informa estimates that the worldwide market for m-commerce was US$359 million in 2006, coming mostly from the Asia-Pacific region.


M-tailing Conference, London Olympia, Feb 5th 2008 REGISTER FOR FREE


What will/can users purchase over mobile?
How big is this market?
How many people use mobile today?
What are the marketing/advertising options on mobile?
How does mobile fit into the current retail channels?
Who sits in the value chain?
What options are available for the budding mobile retailer?
What are the next steps?


M-Tailing 2008 will have all these answers and more. A must attend for executives from the fields of retail and mobile such as e-commerce, mobile billing, mobile vendors, public relations, marketing services and advertising. Speakers include O2, Google, Mobiqa, WIN, Dialogue, and M-metrics.


This one-day master class will do more than serve as an introduction – it will demonstrate how this enormous new sales channel must be embraced right now.


Simply visit our partner Retail Events to register for FREE - REGISTER FOR FREE