How come real m-commerce is not widespread in the developed world?

It's the time of the year again when everyone in telecoms gather in the sunny part of Europe to witness the advancement within the sector. I am observing what is happening in Barcelona this year at the mobile world congress, where announcement for faster data rates, new corporate strategies, open source based handset OS, more new handsets and improvement in technology (4G) is making big waves. All of this are good and promising especially for the developed western world where despite the financial crisis mobile vendors and operators encourage more spending.

There is a sector of course that was once promising back in the turn of the century but is now stagnated, m-commerce. When the first m-commerce applications came about the service received numerous citations from the GSMA. But now it seems that at least in the developed world m-commerce has been relegated to media downloads (ringtone, pics, etc) but not the real financial application. In less developed economies m-commerce has a different meaning, it means real-world financial transactions. In certain parts of the world the service is money mover for the unbanked, in other parts it is the means of payment. But why not in the developed economies?

My observations resulted to one main conclusion. The financial sector in the developed countries are so stable that there is hardly a need for real-world m-commerce such as m-banking and m-payments. However I have not seen any operator in the developed world that have good m-commerce service to offer. Is it because they have not even bother to try? Is it too difficult? Is regulation to blame?

Consider this, would you as a user be better off for having a single device that can do multiple things than have 10 devices do 10 things? The easy answer is of course you prefer to have a single device, which is the direction where all handsets have taken. A modern mobile phone today is also a camera, is also an MP3 player, is also an FM radio, is also an identification mechanism (airline boarding card, etc), is also mobile computer, is also a personal assistant, and the list goes on and on.... So why not explore the benefits of m-commerce in the developed world?

Would you as a user be happier if you know you can render financial transactions with your mobile phone which you carry all the time? Say go to buy a burger and pay with your mobile phone or even to the extreme of buying a car and paying with your mobile phone? Issues of security arises of course, but take into consideration your credit card, how secure is it? The requirement in the credit card business for security is possession and knowledge. In that sense a mobile phone is much more secure with multiple levels of authentication and protection. Would you as a user be more satisfied if the level of security is higher than what your credit card can give but provide the same flexibility and ease of use?

The biggest problem I think is the lack of innovative thinking in the developed world to make real m-commerce a viable service. Now what if and what if one day you wake up and suddenly you have a single device that can truly do everything for you... Welcome to the future!