Yesterday, on one of the many technology solution briefing calls we had, one of the technologists we were speaking with said something very interesting. His company is aiming to bring a solution to market that enables retailers to get ahead of consumers using mobile devices — a highly relevant goal for the times. To emphasize the need for such technologies, he asked us if we could think of a few case studies where retailers have had mobile happen to them, without much control of how mobility is being used in the shopping experience. My partner Paula’s response was perfect: All of them!

The retail respondents in our brand new mobile survey agree. Of the 60 qualified retailers who’ve responded so far, only 6% are happy with the results of their mobile offering to date. In fact, 49% are currently in the process of selecting the right components for their mobile offering as we speak, and 91% say that they “need to be there ” right now, due to the fact that consumers are using mobility as part of their everyday shopping routine.

But 77% agree that the true impact of mobile and its best uses are still not fleshed out. Retailers are hungry for practical, intuitive mobility solutions, and many more are willing to experiment than even we could have predicted. In three years’ time, 50% of our early respondents anticipate that slightly more of their total sales will come from the mobile channel — another 42% say it will be significantly more. These numbers represent massive and fundamental change in how retailers can and will interact with consumers. If we needed to drive home how drastic this change is any further, or how seriously retailers are reacting.

In short — that’s an awful lot of importance ascribed to virtually every mobile capability we offered up as a choice.

If you have not yet had a chance to respond, the survey is still open and available by following this link — but it won’t be open much longer. We look forward to releasing the full report in early September.