SAN FRANCISCO—The message came across loud and clear at the OpenMobile Summit in here Nov. 12-14: mobile has passed the tippingpoint.

But despite a sharp rise in mobile clout, many marketers are notdoing basic things to address it, said Brendon Kraham, a productstrategist at Google, during a panel session.

“There needs to be urgency about this,” he said. “We will soonsee an inflection where there is more consumer activity onmobile.”

Gokul Rajaram, product engineering lead at payments innovatorSquare, stressed during the same panel discussion that in hisview, an important benefit of mobile is that the channel lets“businesses communicate with consumers before, during and after thesale.” He added that mobile is a tool that allows for creatingrelationships that involve multiple touch points over time.

Over at Walmart, Gibu Thomas, senior vice president, digital andglobal ecommerce, said in another presentation that theBentonville, Ark.-based retailer no longer thinks of mobile as adevice.

“We believe smartphones have become extensions of their handsfor our consumers,” he said.

He elaborated that, according to WalMart's research, more thanhalf the discounter's customers have smartphones, and he said thatby 2016, smartphone driven mobile commerce will reach a staggering$27 billion.

Add this up, said Tom Bedecarre, chairman of AKQA, a digitalinnovation company, and mobile is about 365 days of engagement. Ina session about marketing for mobile delivery, he said too manymarketers see mobile as a vertical silo. What's required is ahorizontal view, where mobile touches everything, he said.

Next Page: Time to Be All In

“It is time to be all in on mobile,” Bedecarre said. “Mobile isa huge, trending monster. If you are not embracing it, you will beleft behind.”

Many Open Mobile Summit speakers said the mobile revolution isonly in its first stages, as the domination of smartphones andwearable devices increases.

“Mobile is a way for brands to connect with their consumers,”said Steve Weinswig, managing director of R/GA, a digitaladvertising agency, in a session that addressed mobile advertising.“It all blurs. Are you serving up a product or a service orcontent?”

There even were words of optimism for Near Field Communication,the one-time favorite to sweep mobile commerce that was shunned byApple on its iPhones. And, the NFC-powered Isis mobile commerce pilot organized in 2010 by Verzon,AT&T and T-Mobile appeared to have hit a dead end.

The NFC optimism came from Sprint's chief marketing officer BillMalloy, in an interview with Credit Union Times.

He did not directly comment on Isis, an initiative from whichSprint was left out, but he said, “I know how many devices we areshipping with NFC. The technology is out there.”

He added that good things are also happening with Google Wallet,an NFC-based m-commerce tool that Sprint makes available on severalmobile phones.

A very different point of view was articulated by MitchellBaker, chairperson of Mozilla Corporation, the developer of theopen source browser.

Mobile is coming down to a duel between Apple and Google and thecarriers increasingly look to be irrelevant.

“They are becoming commodities,” she said.

Baker said her view is that in the next phase of mobilecomputing, the web—not apps, but the mobile web—will emerge as aplatform. Furthermore, Baker said she thinks the mobile web andapps will merge, probably in the next five years.