y customer engagement, then it should be. By 2012 a whopping 6 billion mobile devices had been sold. Numbers such as these are meaningless to many of us, so let’s try and put this into some kind of perspective. If you take the entire population of the top 46 countries in the world starting with China, India, and the US, and ending with Nepal and Afghanistan, the total population of these 46 countries is 6 billion. This means that every man, woman, and child in these countries represents a mobile device. The research tells us that mobile phones are used everywhere, while tablets are used at home. Smartphones represent 28 per cent of mobile sales, with PCs at 31 per cent, and tablets not far behind as the fourth most important channel behind bricks and mortar. What this means is that you must have a mobile engagement strategy in place, and if you don’t, time is fast running out. Customer engagement is what it is all about, and increasing revenue is a secondary consideration. That will automatically come. Implementing your strategy means that budget blow out becomes a challenge, especially with resources being scarce and demanding top dollar. To prevent budget blow out you need to prioritise core processes. Other challenges include the expense of integration, data privacy, and mobile platform sprawl, which creates a maintenance headache, but integrating mobile services into a unified engagement experience is the key challenge. A coordinated strategy is therefore required, which includes: Viewing mobile engagement as much more than building apps Understanding and using the unique aspects of the mobile channel Using cloud infrastructure to speed delivery and reduce costs Engaging throughout the sale and beyond If you are not on the mobile merry go round, take steps now. Stuart Bennie is a retail consultant at Impact Retailing and can be contacted at stuart@impactretailing.com.au or 0414 631 702.