Not too many years ago, Lowe’s was cleaning Home Depot’s clock. Service was considered superior and the stores more “female friendly. All that changed in HD’s post-Nardelli era. It started small – HD sealed the floors in the store and removed a lot of extraneous product from the front of the store. This made the store feel cleaner, more open, and yes, more female friendly. During the Great Recession, HD’s advertising was pitch-perfect for the times – advertising paint and low-cost enhancements to improve the home, while Lowe’s continued to advertise higher priced full-on renovations. One was realistic, the other not so much.

Customers have been voting with their wallets. As recently as last quarter, Home Depot reported comparable store sales increases of 4.3% while Lowe’s were down .3%. Granted, we are not in the most splendid housing market ever. But clearly one is outperforming the other. Of course, Lowe’s is too smart a retailer to just fade into the dark night. So while Home Depot has moved forward with an initiative to purchase more than 10,000 Motorola-made hand-held devices for its employees, Lowe’s just took another leap forward. The company announced it is deploying 42,000 iPhones in its stores. With approximately 1749 locations (per Wikipedia) that works out to about 24 iPhones per store.

To quote RSR friend Cathy Hotka, the purchase is “absolutely breathtaking “.

The devices will have multiple functions – starting with inventory checking, showing how-to videos (I imagine they’ll be pretty simple videos, given the screen real estate available) and use lowes.com in store aisles. And that’s just the beginning. Lowe’s spokesmen indicated the overarching goal is to “allow for a seamless transition between customers and employees. “ With Lowe’s recent emphasis on appliances like washers and driers, it’s easy to visualize the iPhones used to consummate a sale, set up home delivery and even take partial payment.

Frequent readers of RSR’s work will know that each of the analysts looks at mobility in the store in a slightly different way. I’m probably the most jaundiced about mobile POS in most cases – after all, consummating a sale is more than just taking someone’s money…it often involves bagging, de-activating EAS tags, taking multiple tenders…it seems to cry out for a check-out stand. BUT…just as self-check-out has found its place in DIY retailers in the sale of physically small items, mobile POS may well find its place in the sale of anything that doesn’t require handing over a product at the point of purchase.

In the meanwhile, Lowe’s store associates will be armed with the same information as the customer, and be able to engage intelligently with him (her?). This is consistent with findings from RSR’s recent store benchmark report The 21st Century Store: The Search for Relevance. In this benchmark, retailers reported that an uninformed, uneducated employee on the selling floor was more damaging than having no employee on the selling floor at all, even as they recognize employees are a big part of the differentiated in-store experience.

So, the bar has been raised in the battle of the DIY’s. Ace Hardware advertises convenience, quick in, and quick out. Home Depot has its mobile devices, far more available associates than ever (and they don’t run and hide anymore either!), and a brighter store. And now Lowe’s is giving its associates iPhones with the apps they need to engage with an educated consumer.

Now all we need is for the housing market to come back a little bit. Then this battle could get really interesting. In the meanwhile, we like what we’re seeing across the segment. Technology-enabled Customer Centricity. It’s a theme we’ve been talking about for several years, and it seems to finally be bearing fruit. May the most customer-centric player win.