The report, “Mobile Commerce Forecast: 2011 to 2016,” predicts an annual compound growth rate of 39 percent for mobile commerce over the next five years. The growth is being driven by consumers who are purchasing more products and categories on their mobile devices. 

“While mobile commerce promises to grow rapidly, it is still a small base of overall transaction volume,” the report states. 

“Consumers need to be more comfortable with retrieving information and commonplace content before they are comfortable transacting on mobile devices.” 

Despite the high rate of growth, Forrester predicts mobile commerce will account for only 7 percent of all ecommerce sales by 2016 and 1 percent of overall sales. Mobile commerce will account for 2 percent of ecommerce sales this year and 3 percent next year. 

The report predicts mobile commerce will reach $6 billion by the end of this year, $10 billion next year and $31 billion by 2016.

Mobile commerce still faces modest investment in mobile by retailers as they deal with issues such as the ROI for mobile and which devices to bet on.

According to the report, 29 percent of retailers have already implemented a mobile strategy, 19 percent are starting work on implementation, 9 percent have a strategy they have not implemented yet while 39 percent are in the early stages of developing a strategy. 

HTML5, when it reaches scale, could help retailers make the mobile space more manageable and increase investment. 

The report points to the fact that many leading retailers already have an optimized mobile presence on key devices, including Amazon, Staples, Apple and Dell. 

Growth of mobile commerce will continue as improvements happen in security, infrastructure and the mobile shopping offerings. 

Security is a big issue for consumers when it comes to mobile commerce, with 45 percent saying they would use the mobile Internet to purchase if their mobile phone number is kept private.