Another way to phrase this is, whether mobile commerce will drastically change life as we know it or not?

Disruptive technologies, according to Christensen, lead to products that are cheaper, simpler, and, often, more convenient to use. By that definition, e-commerce could certainly be seen as a disruptive innovation over brick & mortar commerce, and to some extent, m-commerce could do the same to e-commerce. Or could it?

I look at technological disruption on three levels:

1. Production: will people get fired/hired/retrained? Will production-methods change? etc.?
2. Will technological behaviour change?
3. Will societal behaviour change?

As for the first, I don’t think production will change as dramatically as it did from brick & mortar. Clearly, models like Amazon and eBay wreaked some havoc on book- and second-hand stores. But production and maintenance for an m-commerce application will likely just happen on PCs and will logically be built for both platforms (with some possible exceptions in emerging economies). With the mobile versions of browsers like Safari and Opera, changes also need to be minimal. I do see there being less reliance on keyboards, (i.e. an interface-change), just based on my own clumsy fingers, but e-commerce is not exactly word-intensive.

Regarding changes in technological behaviour, this is clearly already happen and will continue to happen. Things like the Starbucks-Apple partnership for digital music-downloads are just the tip of the iceberg. Eventually, we could be seeing more use of phone’s video- and audio-recording abilities. Imagine taking a picture of your neighbour’s clothes and doing a visual search for that sweater? And of course there could be innovations in terms of mobile payment methods, mobile logistics, rfid and barcode-scanning, etc. The possibilities are endless and only constrained by traditional businesses’ lack of imagination.

Changes in societal behaviour is one I am most excited about. The way I see it, PCs have been an immobile force in our lives for many years, forcing us (in my opinion) to think and act in left-brained ways, not to mention never leave our seats out of fear we might miss something. Now, clearly the 24/7 “crackberry” isn’t exactly the answer, but I’d like the new found freedom that mobile technology enables to lead us down a new or perhaps old path, one where I can even see room for brick & mortar again. Something like:

1. take picture of product in store (after smelling/tasting/touching/trying it on),
2. send picture to warehouse,
3. warehouse ships home.

Removing one the most annoying component of shopping, carrying your shopping-bags home.

Two out of three… I think that qualifies as disruptive! But this is just my opinion of course, and I’m just beginning learn about the world of m-business. Tell me how you visualise mobile technology changing (y)our lives, or perhaps not?

Vincent