The results from the Strategy Analytics consumer survey (www.strategyanalytics.com), conducted in the US, UK and China, showed that smartphone owners were much more likely than feature phone owners to use their devices either while shopping or for shopping.

Usage at home demonstrates that smartphones are frequently used for research on products. Sixty-one percent of smartphone owners use the device for shopping at home. Usage while out and about shows a very similar pattern to usage at home, although slightly more users overall have used their smartphone while out and about (67% compared to 61%). The least popular shopping activity on all devices is the actual point of purchase itself.

"Brick and mortar retailers are not waiting for carriers or OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] to roll out mobile payments and are leveraging mobile solutions already in the market, such as mobile advertising, couponing, loyalty cards and alternative payments, to drive footfall in stores, and convert that footfall into revenues," says David MacQueen, director of the Wireless Media Strategies research program.

Nitesh Patel, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, adds: "A lot of the mobile industry's focus on mobile's place in the retail environment has been around contactless payments enabled by NFC technology. The ramp up is extremely slow and even years from now we are expecting only a minority of consumers will use mobile payments; our Mobile Contactless Payments Forecast predicts 158 million users, or 2.9%t of total cellular users in 2017. This simply does not compare with the opportunity in the market today for the mobile industry to assist the ailing retail sector."