Disappointed or not, we were all very interested in, what is, essentially a gathering of Apple geeks. In fact, type ‘WWDC 2013’ into Google and you will get a staggering 59m search results, compared to a paltry 33m for ‘WWDC 2012’.

This mass interest highlights the incredibly important role that mobile now plays in our lives.  

At the end of last year, there were a staggering 6.8bn mobile subscriptions globally. That is equivalent to 96% of the world population.

What’s more, one in six handsets are now smart phones and by 2016, annual smartphone shipments worldwide will account for more than half of all handsets shipped.

So it won’t come as a surprise to any of us that access to the internet using a mobile has more than doubled between 2010 and 2012, both in the UK and US.  Our trusty phone is rapidly becoming the primary medium used to check email, book flights, shop online and interact with social media.

But how are brands around the world dealing with mobile? Are they embracing it? Shunning it? Or, running scared?  That’s exactly what we wanted to find out in our third and latest, Reducing Customer Struggle Report from Econsultancy.   

The mobile explosion of the past 12 months has been phenomenal and in this year’s study we delved deeper into the mobile customer experience.  After all, as last year’s report found, customers expect brands to have a perfect mobile specific website and a mobile app and they increasingly expect the experience delivered by both of these to be second to none.

But here’s the catch, customer expectation today on mobile devices is higher than ever. If the mobile experience isn’t right first time, customers won’t come back. 

Most organisations do understand and recognise the importance of mobile channels but they don’t always get it right.  This has to change. Now.  

In the next two years everything will become mobile and access to the internet via a mobile device will become the ‘norm’.

Companies only have one chance with mobile and if they get it wrong, they risk losing out in an increasingly mobile world. Get it right, and you will reap the rewards.