Roughly 98% of the U.S. digital shopping population use their smartphones while in stores to research and buy products and services, according to annual shopper research from Cisco. The company also reported a 15% compounded annual growth rate for smartphone shoppers over the next three years.

As mobility in retail continues to grow, how can merchants find and capture true mobile value? How can mobility be used to transform store operations and increase profits? As retailers expand their wireless network infrastructures, which Wi-Fi and mobile technologies should be included?

Many traditional retailers are still grappling with ways to appeal to omnichannel shoppers who are researching and buying from their tablets and smartphones. To become more connected with these consumers, a number of retailers are forming innovation labs to develop technology that optimizes the shopping experience regardless of how or where customers interact with the brand.

Retailers are looking for new ways to reach consumersbeyond the four walls of the store, noted Gary Schwartz, CEO of Impact Mobile and author of Fast Shopper, Slow Store. “As Mike Duke from Walmart often is quoted, ‘The walls of our store are porous’ and retail, like media buying, broadcast, publishing, is about to pivot in a profound and irreversible way. Many existing business models will dry up. Many old revenue streams will become commodity channels or be circumvented over-the-top by new technologies or new business models.”

If you’ve felt overwhelmed by the jungle of new social platforms, new e-Commerce tools, and new mobile devices, you aren’t alone. Technology is evolving at breakneck speeds, and it can easily spook us into jumping blindly into areas we don’t need to be, or else waiting in hiding until we know what works. We either run madly into the jungle or we nervously look in from the outside.

The truth is that neither answer is very helpful because they’re based on an incorrect understanding of the jungle. It’s not just technology in there. It’s everything — tech, sure, but also our consumers. And our brands should be in there, too — not battling against technology, but learning how to live in harmony with it and with consumers.

More than one billion smartphones are in use worldwide, according to a recent mobile trends study conducted by Forrester Research. “Mobile is driving a second Internet revolution that’s even more profound than the first one,” wrote Thomas Husson and Julie Ask, authors of the study. “Mobile creates new value for consumers and businesses, alters cost structures, and disrupts ecosystems. That’s why marketers must move away from tactical mobile efforts to more transformative mobile marketing strategies in 2013.”

Based on key mobile developments in 2012, the fourth annual mobile trends report from Forrester, titled: 2013 Mobile Trends For Marketers: Multiyear Strategies And Larger Investments Define This Year, offers insights to significant mobile trends taking place in 2013, including: