iPhone apps are the big thing at the moment, but is focussing on one device the right way of capturing the potential of mobile commerce?

I had been planning to write about Andy Hornby’s speech at the BRC lecture last night, but the Boots boss didn’t say anything very revelatory in his speech, instead giving a very general overview of economic and consumer trends. It was interesting enough but not much you won’t know already.

Actually the most interesting thing about it was the frequency with which the super-brainy Hornby used the phrase “you’ll know much better than me” to the audience, even on subjects which the former HBoS boss would have known more than most people about. It felt like an organised exercise in humility but that’s probably what you have to go through when you’ve had the carpeting he did after the banking crisis.

So I’m going to blog about something completely different, which is mobile commerce. I have to preface this by saying that my understanding of technology is minimal, so this is my layman’s interpretation of what’s going on, but m-commerce is a big talking point at the moment. Today we reported that Argos is launching in iPhone app while last week we reported that Marks & Spencer has chosen the different route of building a dedicated mobile version of its website which can be used across all devices.

The iPhone is very much of the moment and the concept of the app has really caught the public imagination. Tesco’s iPhone Clubcard app is in the top five downloaded in the UK, and others like the red laser have huge potential for shoppers when it comes to comparing prices. The Argos one looks pretty cute too and it should do well from it as its click and reserve model lends itself well to mobile.

However lots of people, myself included, don’t have one, and face the rather more fundamental issue that its impossible to shop online using most ecommerce sites through a phone as few of them are optimised for mobiles.

So I think M&S’s approach makes more sense, doing the simple task of enabling shoppers to buy online whatever handset they use, and not just restricting the ability to transact to owners of a handset which, despite the hype, represents only a very small proportion of the phones being used in the UK today.

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