Mobile gets ringing

Macy's boss Terry Lundgren proudly announced the imminent launch of an ambitious iPhone application for Bloomingdale's on day one of this most prestigious annual event for online retailers.

Day two, eBay's John Donohoe - "the pain from Bain," an allusion to his previous employer - spent almost half his keynote waving his iPhone and boasting that his company would generate $400 million in gross merchandise sales this year from the eBay iPhone application.

Indeed, that milestone makes eBay the No. 1 mobile retail marketplace worldwide.

To top it all, Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, in her keynote following Mr. Lundgren's, said marketers should "like social media, but love mobile."

The same afternoon, retailers and retail service providers gathered to listen to key decision-makers at Harrah's, Fandango and Moosejaw discuss their various initiatives in a session titled, "Mobile Commerce: The Next Frontier for Retail." About 300 executives sat through that hour-long session, asking nearly 30 questions.

Hard to believe, then, that this was an ecommerce event and not a mobile conference.

Harder still to believe that this was claimed as one of the most successful Shop.org annual summits: an estimated 2,600 delegates including exhibitor passes in the nation?s worst recession since the great recession.

Credit for organizing a focused and well-run show goes to Shop.org executive director Scott Silverman and vice president of content Larry Joseloff and their team.

While other shows lack not only attendance and enthusiasm, Shop.org?s annual summit proved that the Web, be it wired or mobile, continues its untrammeled growth.

Traffic on the show floor was brisk. The chatter there and in the various sessions was about social media, video and mobile.

Asked about their mobile initiatives, many ecommerce vendors on the show floor said they intended to look at mobile but did not have any offerings. The exceptions were Digby, Naviscent, Silverpop, ExactTarget and Web Spiders.

Perhaps the vendors should have attended the mobile commerce session moderated by yours truly. In a show of hands, most attendees said they intended to launch mobile marketing and commerce programs by end of next year.

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