The fact that we all have technology at our fingertips has caused a disintermediation within traditional commerce, and significant disruption for retailers big and small. Consider the impact of Netflix on Blockbuster and local video stores, or how Amazon upended book buying. What we know for sure is that innovation, and the speed at which a business is able to innovate, is no longer an option. Rather, it is paramount to survival.

In the next decade, we’ll see more change in the commerce landscape than in the past 100 years combined.The reason? Four mega trends being driven by consumers are dramatically changing buying and selling habits as we know them. Merchants of all types—from brick-and-mortar retail outlets to non-profits, to manufacturers and even those selling online, need to ensure they’re keeping pace or risk going the way of Blockbuster, Borders and the dinosaurs.

Mobile

Smartphone sales are on such an aggressive upward trajectory that some estimates suggest there will be up to 50 billion connected devices (beyond just smartphones) by 2020 and each consumer will have approximately seven devices connected to the Internet. Beyond just making phone calls or sending text messages, people regularly look up directions, research products while in-store, chat and compare with friends and family, search for deals and even pay for their morning coffee with their mobile phone.

These intelligent, always-connected devices and the consumers using them to their full potential are pushing merchants to react quickly, or die. Businesses that don’t have a mobile commerce strategy are losing out on significant revenue, and that’s only going to continue to accelerate.

Local

Not long ago the most impressive features of online shopping were the ability to find out which stores were located in your neighborhood and determine which might have your item in.

Now, there’s an app for that!  By leveraging inventory sharing and local mapping, buyers can now access real-time inventory data while on the go, browse through sales and deals tailored to their individual preferences and even get suggestions based on things like frequently visited restaurants, clubs, hotels and more. This is powerful stuff.

The merging of mobile and local is also leading to the creation of entirely new business models and opportunities for merchants and consumers alike. A great example is that people are now able to get paid for snapping photos while out and about in their cities. How cool is that?

If you’re not taking full advantage of the ability to reach customers based on stated preferences and proximity, you’ve already fallen behind.

Social

Commerce is an inherently social endeavor. Not long ago, a customer would try on a sweater while in-store and ask her friends for feedback before purchasing. Today that same customer can just as easily try on the sweater, snap a photo of herself wearing it, share it on her social network of choice and get a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ within minutes from multiple friends in various locations. There are apps that will share what a person’s friends have purchased on social sites or allow users to share local recommendations with one another.

The explosion of consumer interest in social networks has spawned the so-called social commerce opportunity. In fact, transacting within social networks is predicted to go from a billion opportunity in 2011 to a billion opportunity by 2015.

The challenge for merchants? How to effectively leverage a customers’ social graph to build an additional commerce channel within the social networks themselves. We’re beginning to see early signs of this with some of the group gifting apps and the ‘social shopping mall’ concept that allows sellers to offer their products directly to hundreds of millions of Facebook users.

Digital

Digital has changed everything—including how we use and think about currency. People now have the ability to bump phones together to pay off a friendly wager, order and pay for a meal entirely via a mobile device and transfer paper checks into their account by snapping a photo with their mobile phone.

Similar changes are occurring in-store. Consumers can pick up an item off the shelf, scan the barcode using their mobile phone and immediately find out if the same item is available online or down the street for a lower price.

The digital revolution is here, it’s real and it has leveled the playing field for both buyers and sellers of all shapes and sizes.

The Future

As the mobile, local, social and digital trends drive our lifestyles, the pace of innovation will determine which businesses will go boom or bust. At the end of the day, merchants want to return to the business of being merchants. They want to find the best things to sell to consumers and they want to create the best shopping experience a consumer can have. Those that are nimble and seek to adapt quickly to emerging consumer behaviors will not only survive, but thrive. One thing is for sure—the future will look nothing like the past.

What do you think commerce will look like in 5-10 years?

Matthew Mengerink is vice president and general manager of X.commerce, the first end-to-end, multi-channel commerce technology platform designed for all the ways consumers choose to shop today. Matthew leads the integrated open commerce platform group and is responsible for ensuring that eBay Inc. builds a strong, robust developer community across the eBay, PayPal and GSI technology platforms to amplify merchants’ businesses.

To hear more about mobile payments, check out our GigaOM Mobilize conference Sept. 26 and 27 in San Francisco.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Johan Larsson.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunities
• NewNet Q2: Google closes the quarter with a bang
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

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With the rapid progression brought about in the nano technology, Mac books by Apple Inc. are one of the many forms guiding to the road of improvement. Sleek screens, impressive design and resourceful designing applications are a few common features of choosing Mac books. However, the LCDs are quite flimsy to take care of. It is a regular problem to find the LCDs broken or out of order with their constant use. There are several Mac book repair shops that are expert in in repairing your notebooks. Particular for each member of the Mac book family; mainly, Mac book Pro and Mac book Air, Mac book screen repair is another facility for the ease of its users.

Mac books, being a major advancement in the nano technology, were originally designed for design work. The primary concept behind introducing them was giving a new face to graphic design, video production, and even audio work. This was a huge benefit for all the graphic designers and business people.

Why should we go for Mac books in the first place? There are various responses to this question. The main reason for choosing a Mac book is its pioneer design and light weight. Along with the many different specialities of a Mac book, besides only being portable, are aluminum casing, making it shinier and lighter; the ‘unibody’, making it stronger; and backlit LED display. Also Mac books are easy to carry to your workplace as well as universities where they can assist you in different presentations involving multimedia.

Besides operating as just another computer at a distance of your lap, a Mac book has striking new characterstics like NVIDIA graphics, perfect for applications and modified games. Added to this are, Mini Display port, Cinema Display, multi touch track pad and a storage memory of 250 GB are impressive features. As for the battery life, the latest Mac book gives you a battery of 4-5 whole hours of graphic tasking and designing; while, that is mostly dependant on your graphic processor.

Despite having such vaiety of benefits, people are often observed to criticize a little about the reliability of Mac books. The majority of complaints are about the flimsy LCD. The screens are observed to be out of use within a small time span. Added to this is the glossy appearance of the LCD that means you cannot work on your Mac book outside because the glare will not make anything able to be seen. Next is the cost. The Mac books cost you a lot more than a regular PC. However, the numerous gains outweigh it all. After all, you can never obtain something for free!

There are different firms operating today solving the dilemma of repairing Mac books and screens. Individuals should understand that overall nothing is flawless. There are certain problems about Mac books as well but they are shortly to be corrected by the companies. You cannot ignore the great advancements they have brought about. Everyday a new discovery is born, and within a short time span happens to be a part of our life. Time will tell us more about new answers and researches yet to strike the city!

Boys have always liked their toys, and this has never been as true as it is today, where people have more free time than ever before. They say the devil makes work for idle thumbs, and gadgets and technology have (arguably) kept males out of mischief better than anything else you can buy. Here are 3 of the latest and greatest boys toys to hit the market, and any men reading will likely want to get their hands on them straight away.

Swiss Army Phone. Cell (mobile) phones have evolved beyond recognition of the last 10 years and boast some pretty impressive features these days. That said, a Korean phone is set to take this one step further and add a whole lot more physical tools also.  According to the makers it will include a knife, bottle opener, pen, compass, scissors and even an electric razor, making them ideal gifts for men.

Glass Cleaning Robot. Very few men enjoy doing housework or cleaning the car, which is why any gadget that will do it for them is very popular. This gravity defying robot secures itself to glass via vacuum suckers and has sensors on it that make it change direction when it runs out of glass. This means that you can leave it alone and it will clean the whole piece of glass using rotating cleaning brushes. The robot is only about the size of a computer mouse, so it’s a perfectly portable little thing. These gadgets also make great gifts for her, because let’s face it, women like to be lazy sometimes as well.

2-Way Video Shades. Shades that have mini TV screens in them, allowing you to watch videos or play games without a TV have been around for a little while now. What is a new invention thorough, are glasses that not only have internal monitors, but have outwardly-pointing monitors as well.This comes in very handy when in a class room or a meeting when you want to watch a bit of TV without anyone knowing. You can watch The Simpsons on the screens pointing inwards and project a video of your eyes, alert and blinking to everyone on the outside world. Genius!

There’s no doubt that getting Dish Network Television in your home can be a great benefit to your family, but you may not realize just how great this service is now thanks to the fact that this company is continually improving. In fact, with a larger selection of channels than ever before this is the satellite TV alternative that you and your family will enjoy the most! Get the details at Free Dish TV Special Deals

Dish Network Television‘s great service begins with letting you choose the level of programming that best suits the needs of your family by selecting from numerous different packages. These entertainment packages range from the small and economical to huge ones that are designed to deliver the ultimate level of choice of programming! They start out with the ultra-economical Dish Family which has more than fifty channels specially chosen to appeal to every member of the family while remaining family frienly and value oriented. Classic Bronze 100 is an excellent choice for any family who wants a compromise between economy and selection! As it’s name implies, Classic Bronze 100 has about one hundred channels and gives you the option of taking advantage of possible upgrades such as adding on premium movie channels, extra sports channels, and a top of the line HDTV package through Turbo HD! Classic Silver 200 has all of the channels and benefits of Classic Bronze 100 but doubles the base number of channels that are available to you. DVR advantage adds the benefits of a DVR to the already impressive features of Classic Silver 200, and Classic Gold 250 tops off the classic series of entertainment packages with access to an impressive two hundred and fifty channels! Of course, if you want the best value and the biggest selection of channels, then you should go with America’s Everything Pak, which adds all of the premium movie channels (plus NBA TV) to the impressive selection of channels that come with Classic Gold 250!

If you want the best possible home cinema experience than you have to get a Turbo HD HDTV entertainment package through Dishnetwork! With well over a hundred HDTV channels available, this innovation has made Dish TV the leader when it comes to providing home theater quality TV content. HDTV is the new TV format that features a higher resolution picture, better sound quality, and a wide screen aspect ratio with all its televised video! All of this allows you to take full advantage of today’s latest HDTV technology! Turbo HD is also a great benefit because the channels that it offers are divided up into separate packages that are designed to complement the classic series of entertainment packages, so that you’ll automatically get Turbo HD Bronze when you have the Classic Bronze 100 package and you sign up for Turbo HD. The same is true for Classic Silver 200 and Classic Gold 250! Another great option is being able to sign up for a Turbo HD package without subscribing to a standard def package. After all, with HDTV the up and coming TV format, at some point all entertainment packages will be all HDTV channels! Dish Network satellite TV is simply bringing this about sooner than anyone else! To get all the latest technology go to Free Dish Network Television Special

When you look at all of the options that you have when you decide to go with Dishnetwork, you can see why this is the satellite TV provider that will best suit your family’s needs. You owe it to yourself and your family to embrace the quality that is Dish Network at Free Dish Network Television Deal

Some of you are probably waiting for the PSP 2 or the PSP Go! to become available, but you shouldn’t hold your breath while doing that, because you can never know when you’ll have the chance to see those devices hitting the market.

Anyway, while waiting why not enjoying yourself with a brilliant device concept which can easily be considered the ultimate gaming console. It’s just that naming the EME only a portable gaming console isn’t enough because you have at your disposal much more features than just this one.

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Besides the gaming console, the EME is a video player and a music player, but it’s not everything. Designed by Shao Wei Huang, this mobile device concept is equipped with lots of other impressive features that might be at your liking.

Now, EME is provided with a dual screen which can always be used in order to view all sorts of important information such as contacts, photos or SMS messages, but only in the standard mode. Yes, you read it right. EME is able to send messages, which means is also a cell phone. Talking about the standard mode, you should know that when the device is turned sideways, you can enjoy the ultimate gaming experience.

Not to mention the fact that, being touch sensitive, the screen increases not only the gaming experience, but also the video and music ones.

“The ‘evolutional’ aspect comes from the EME’s ability to expand its feature set if the user shares his/her experiences with other EMEs. That could be in the form of videos, music or games. By doing so, bigger speakers would unlock and slide out, the screen may even become higher-res. The idea is to encourage the device’s evolution by exposing it to as many experiences possible”.

(Source: Concept-Phones)