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Little nod to mcommerce, mpayments winds on CTIA Las Vegas show floor


As in years past, the four-day, gargantuan event ? moved to the Sands Expo & Convention Center this year from the Las Vegas Convention Center ? is a celebration of all things nuts and bolts. 

Hundreds of booths are spread across acres of concrete, steel and fluorescent lighting to showcase accessories, emerging technology, wireless innards and tower equipment and software for the colocated Tower Summit.

Yes, there was a retail zone, but not in that sense. This is mobile retail, not the retail of products and services and how mobile influences and enables that process.

Rarified airwaves
While consumer-facing mobile issues were never the forte of any CTIA show, it behooves the country?s largest wireless association to take the lead to address some of the concerns that affect the future of its members. 

Put it this way: Carriers and the constellation that exists around them are ignoring players and trends that will disintermediate them from future lucrative opportunities to play key roles in mobile commerce and mobile payments.

Through inertia or willful neglect, carriers have ceded ground on mobile advertising and marketing, mobile content, mobile games, maps, music, photos, mobile Web, mobile applications and mobile email. 

Carriers have virtually no skin in the game with these services on mobile devices, be it smartphones or tablets. No part in the creation, no part in the storage of data, no part in the curation and no cut from the profits. What a lapse on their part, and something they will come to regret in the years to come.

And now they are ceding ground to Amazon, Apple, eBay?s PayPal and a bunch of other players vying to become the mobile payment channel of choice when all the carriers have to do is work with payment processors such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express to add a payment button to each phone and embed their payment tool in each mobile commerce site or app.

But no, carriers are too smart to do that. The CTIA Las Vegas show floor is demonstrative of this neglect. 

It is no wonder that CTIA has had to consolidate its two shows into one single fall event in Las Vegas starting next year. But by then it may be too late for the carriers.  One by one, the doors of opportunity to participate in the future of retail are shutting. And then carriers will realize that talk is really cheap.

Some photos from the CTIA 2013 show floor: