UK plc shuns m-commerce

Don't even think about it

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Data Networking, 4th October 2001 16:31 GMT

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The joys of m-commerce - buying things over your phone - are being categorically ignored by UK business with just two per cent of them having a "strategy" for the dubious pastime. And 78 per cent haven't even thought about it.

That's according to Benchmark Research - which was paid by Intel to speak to 400 companies in Europe and ask them various questions. And all this depite the fact that "mobile data users" will number 720 million by the end of this year (according to the Arc Group).

The French and Germans are a bit more enthusiatic than the Brits, with four and six per cent having a "strategy" (what the hell does that mean by the way?).
More factoids: 32 per cent of European companies surveyed have no one looking at m-commerce; over half UK businesses don't have a specific person or department for m-commerce; 87 per cent of UK companies prefer to wait for others to come up with new technology; nearly half of UK companies think m-commerce is nothing but a fad.

We can't imagine why people would think m-commerce a fad. After all, it's not as if WAP has been a complete failure, that 3G networks are looking less exciting (and late) by the day or that no one has really worked out why you would want to buy anything over a phone anyway.

Did we ever mention our example of buying a CD on your phone while walking past a record store? Oh right, thought we had. ®