I received an email invitation today to a view a recorded Webinar about mobile commerce hosted by  San Diego-based cross-channel commerce solutions provider Escalate Retail. The Webinar, “m-Commerce: The Gateway to Buy Anywhere, Fulfill Anywhere Commerce,” demonstrates how retailers are able to enhance the consumer shopping experience by incorporating the mobile channel (You can listen to the recorded Webinar here, free with registration.). Mobile commerce is already highly popularized in Europe and Asia. Why North America is slow to adopt is anyone’s guess — excuses are certainly running out, especially now that there are 68 million smartphone subscribers, a rate that’s growing 80 percent annually, Escalate reports.

According to Escalate Retail,the cross-channel consumer is hands down your most valuable. In a survey that asked whether consumers “shop across multiple channels,” 49 percent said no while 51 percent said yes. I was pretty surprised by how close these numbers were, but I often forget that most people aren’t tied to their computers for 90 percent of their waking hours — right?

In any case, of those 51 percent self-ascribed, cross-channel shoppers, Escalate reports that, compared to the non-cross-channel shopper, they:

- spend $30 additional on in-store sales;
- spend 50 percent more with your company each year; and
- have a 4.5 times greater lifetime business value.

Citing Forrester Research, Escalate reports that by 2012, 38 percent of total retail sales are conducted by cross-channel consumers, up from 20 percent in 2007, or $510 billion. (The report can be found here, purchase is required.)

“I don’t think I need to go into any detail around the pain we’re all feeling in today’s challenging economic environment,” opened Rich Harmatiuk, vice president and general manager at Escalate Retail. So throwing retailers another channel to juggle with at this time may be another reason–no doubt a legitimate one–mobile commerce has yet to take off. But as we all know, innovation is critical when times are tough.

The goal is to make the mobile phone “useful, entertaining, and vehicle for purchase,” said Dave Bruno, director of product marketing at Escalate Retail–in other words, a device that enables “utilitainment.”  Albeit slower than other regions of the world, the U.S. is getting there — 9.2 million United States mobile consumers use their mobile devices to pay for goods or services (the Webinar doesn’t indicate how Nielsen asked this particular question so I’m wondering how inflated this number may be…), and 49 percent of mobile consumers say they intend to participate in mobile commerce in future.

Escalate may think 2009 is the year for mobile commerce but based on what I’ve seen at retail conferences this past year, I’m going to pull the skeptical card.

I covered ForeSee Results’ Top 40 Online Retailer Satisfaction Index, which reported that only 29 percent of approximately 9,000 consumers surveyed used their mobile phones as part of their shopping experience. Nevertheless, for those who do use it, mobile does admittedly help — mobile phones integrated into the in-store shopping experience increased likelihood to purchase by 6 percent.

Still, if online retailers are any indication (if anything, they should be the forerunners) of what mobile commerce should look like, the probability of it all taking off in 2009 (can you believe it’s almost August?) seems a bit ambitious. Attendees at the eTail trade show in Phoenix this past February were asked whether they had implemented mobile applications for their own company—17 percent said yes; 66 percent said no; and 16 percent said they plan to have one by the next holiday season. I was mostly surprised that only 31 percent of attendees reported using mobile applications while shopping in a retail store. (Read more about CRM‘s coverage on the state of retail here.)

As an iPhone user myself, I can’t imagine how I ever got along without it (How did people ever resolve bets before smartphones?). And yet, I’m still not using my phone as a shopping tool — restaurant guide, maybe, store locator, definitely — but I have yet to make any direct purchases or take some snazzy, 2D bar-code photo. But hey, there’s still time — five months to be exact.