Did you pick up your Sunday Argus Leader? Kelly Thurman wrote an article yesterday about using mobile phones for making purchases and quoted 9 Clouds on trends in the mobile industry. You can read the full story at this link or below when the link dies.

You can check your Facebook page, look for directions to a new restaurant and even buy a new sweater using your smartphone these days.

Mobile phones have provided retailers with an easy, affordable way to reach new and existing customers.

The National Retail Federation estimates that by 2015 shoppers worldwide are expected to use their mobile phones to buy goods and services worth close to $120 billion – amounting to 8 percent of the total e-commerce market.

A lot of national companies already are cashing in on the mobile retailing concept – Target and Walmart, for example, both have mobile sites.

But what about the small mom-and-pop shops? Is mobile retailing beyond their capabilities?

That doesn’t have to be the case, according to one online marketing firm in Sioux Falls.

Scott Meyer, with 9 Clouds, expects within two years to start seeing more smaller, mom-and-pop shops set up mobile retail shops to allow for actual purchases, starting first with companies that are working with national brands.

“The great thing is, small-town shops with mobile technology can all of a sudden compete a lot better,” with national companies, Meyer said.

But it doesn’t necessarily have to mean creating a retail application or a mobile website. In many ways, social networking and texting is a great way to slowly step into the mobile retailing landscape, and Meyer already is seeing that in the Sioux Falls region.

For example, Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet restaurant recently started using Foursquare to attract customers, and Nick’s Hamburger Shop in Brookings has had success in text messaging coupons to customers.

Meyer said some business owners still are hesitant to use the Web to market and sell their items, partly because there is so much new technology out there.

But it holds a lot of potential, particularly in catching the younger generation who aren’t reading newspapers or listening to the radio, he said.

It will be some years before mobile sales really take off with smaller companies here in Sioux Falls. But it seems inevitable that customers someday will expect it.

Better get acquainted with it now rather than waiting until it’s too late.