During the next five years, mobile commerce will become even more influential than it is today. Desktop PC use will continue to drop while PC makers try making PCs and laptops function more like touchscreen mobile devices, consumers will start to buy wearable computers (including smartwatches and smartglasses), and consumers also will begin buying new web-connected devices for the home and car that combined are known as the “Internet of Things.”

As a result, retailers will need to shift their focus from the type of device a consumer uses (mobile or stationary) to a consumer’s location and context, Internet retailing experts predict. And because context will be key at a time when mobile devices come to dominate the way consumers interact with the web, knowing the best ways to serve customers on smartphones and tablets will remain a strategic priority for retailers, experts say. 55% of time spent with online retail today occurs on smartphones and tablets—imagine what that figure will be in five years.

In five years, e-commerce on desktops and laptops will still exist, and m-commerce on smartphones and tablets will still exist, but to consumers, online shopping will mean researching and buying wherever they may be on whatever device is best suited to the moment or whatever device is simply handy, says Jeff Schueler, president of Usability Sciences Corp., an e-commerce and m-commerce research and consulting firm.

“In five years e-commerce and m-commerce will become ‘contextual commerce,'” Schueler says. “The consumer will make a purchase in whatever situation he is in when he realizes the need for that purchase—on a desktop computer at work, on an iPad on the couch at home, on an iPhone as he rides in a car. That said, the odds of the consumer completing that purchase in a given context is dependent on whether the retailer can, in that context, assure the customer he’s getting the best price, assure the customer he can get it delivered when he wants it, assure the customer he will receive a quality product, and assure the customer the product fits his needs.”

In online shopping five years from today, location will be a critical component of context, a component that will drive design, features and functions, says Nikki Baird, a managing partner at Retail Systems Research LLC.

“Location services will become so sophisticated—and consumers, in their typical approach to their privacy, ignorant enough—that the shopping experience will hinge on the combination of the type of device and the location of the consumer,” Baird says. “That will tell the retailer how to engage with a shopper, down to whether the shopper is accessing the retailer on a smartphone from the retailer¹s own Wi-Fi in-store or in the parking lot, or from the same IP address in the home, and so on.”

In 2018, mobile commerce sales on smartphones and tablets will account for 27% of total web sales in the U.S., according to research firm eMarketer Inc., and 47% of total web sales worldwide, according to investment bank The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The percentage globally is higher because the percentage of consumers who primarily use smartphones to access the web is much higher in developing countries with huge populations compared with the U.S.

Baird says in five years the distinction of mobile commerce being shopping and buying on smartphones and tablets will remain, but retailers will by then have much more experience selling to consumers on mobile devices and will better know how to customize shopping by device, context and location.

“Retailers already separate tablets from smartphones within the category of mobile devices, that’s how they look at traffic,” Baird says. “But five years from now, retailers will have much more distinct strategies for tablet shoppers versus smartphone shoppers. The behaviors are different, and the experiences are very different.”

It should be noted that shopping on mobile devices occurs not just on the go but in the home. Some retailers like to call this “mobile in the home,” meaning a customer can shop from literally any location within their homes thanks to their untethered mobile devices and home Wi-Fi networks. 80% of tablet shoppers and 67% of smartphone shoppers use their devices to shop in the home, according to new research from Nielsen. So mobile is still mobile, but context on the very same device can change wildly.

Mobile devices—defined as smartphones and tablets, by far the most common definition used by retailers—will continue to be mobile anywhere and everywhere, experts say. Consumers who own smartphones are virtually never without their smartphones, no matter the time or location. And 68% of consumers who own both a desktop and a tablet take their tablets with them when they leave home at least 25% of the time; 14% take their tablets 75-99% of the time, according to research from marketing firm Adroit Digital.

Ultimately, when it comes to online shopping, consumers in the home will dump their desktop PCs and laptops in favor of tablets, predicts Julie A. Ask, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

“In five years, tablets will offer a more immersive experience,” Ask says. “These tablets will have cameras. There will be gesture-based and voice control. They’ll have two cameras on one side of the device for 3-D imaging, measurements, etc., things that will allow consumers to have more experience with products before they buy them.”

But while tablets come to dominate mobile commerce sales as well as replace desktops and laptops, the importance of smartphones does not diminish, Ask says.

“Smartphones play a huge role in the purchase process: The percentage of purchases smartphones influence dwarfs the total amount of sales transacted on smartphones,” she says. “Mobility and connected devices, especially smartphones, are changing everything about the way companies sell products and offer customer service.”

Eventually, additional web-connected devices in the home and car will play important roles in online shopping, as smartphones and tablets do today. These other devices include smart TVs, mirrors, shoes, washing machines, refrigerators and others, Ask says, describing what many call “the Internet of Things.” “All of these devices will be connected,” she says. “One utility they will offer is commerce: Think automatic replacement of ink cartridges or new running shoes or adding milk to the grocery list.”

Some research firms are bullish on the Internet of Things (which excludes PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones). IoT will grow to 26 billion units installed in 2020, representing an almost 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion in 2009, according to technology research firm Gartner Inc.

“The growth in IoT will far exceed that of other connected devices. By 2020, the number of smartphones tablets and PCs in use will reach about 7.3 billion units,” says Peter Middleton, research director at Gartner. “In contrast, the IoT will have expanded at a much faster rate, resulting in a population of about 26 billion units at that time.”

But Gartner does not break out forecasts by type of web-connected device or by industry, such as retail. Gartner also expects that “ghost” devices with unused connectivity will be common. This will be a combination of products that have the capability built in but require software to “activate” it and products with IoT functionality that customers do not actively leverage. In other words, many consumers may have web-connected devices but will not be using them or will not have all the technology required to make IoT devices function.

Cisco Systems, which calls IoT the “Internet of Everything,” expects 50 billion IoT units by 2020. However, even the CEO of the research firm, Beecham Research, that put together the studies upon which Cisco based its expectations, says IoT estimates today may be absurdly high, saying errors in forecasts on this very new type of technology are potentially enormous.

The Internet of Things will not become commonplace during the next five years, maybe not even in the next 10 years, some experts predict.

“The general reaction to Google¹s acquisition of Nest shows that it’s one thing to be invasive on a mobile device, but it’s another thing entirely to be invasive about things that go on in the home,” says Baird. Nest offers web-connected thermostats and smoke detectors. “It will take 10 years at least for ‘Internet of Things’ devices to be useful enough and prevalent enough to wear down consumers’ objections to companies controlling things inside their homes. Plus, we¹re going to have to go through a lot of innovation and then consolidation before these web-connected devices get useful enough.”

While the Internet of Things may indeed have a major effect on the way people shop online, it’s mobile commerce that stands to benefit from the proliferation of web-connected devices in the home that can track products, some experts say.

“The information from Internet of Things devices in some cases will influence or inform retail purchases; for example, a smart appliance notifying a consumer via smartphone alert that parts or service is required, and enabling the consumer to place an order through an app on the phone,” says Middleton of Gartner. “Smartphones and tablets are more practical and this will continue to be the case.”

However, one newer web-connected device is likely to gain quite a bit of ground in the next few years. That device is the Internet-connected, or smart, TV. In the United States, web-connected TVs will be in nearly 53 million American households by 2016, accounting for 43% of all U.S.televisions, according to new data from research firm BI Intelligence. Globally, shipments of smart TVs will reach a tipping point in 2015, when they will overtake shipments of traditional TVs, BI Intelligence forecasts.

When it comes to the future of e-commerce and m-commerce, chain retailers cannot afford to overlook the “glue opportunity” mobile commerce affords, Baird says.

“Mobile is as much about bridging physical and digital as it is about enabling digital,” Baird says. “The one nut retailers have not yet truly figured out how to crack is mobile as part of a physical shopping experience. Some retailers don’t want to encourage a combined experience because they’re afraid of showrooming. And some retailers just have very little imagination when it comes to how to use mobile to drive a more convenient or more engaging in-store experience.”

Baird says she is still waiting for a chain retailer to create a compelling combined store, online and mobile shopping experience.

“I haven’t seen one yet that gets me excited,” she says. “Too much of it is still tech for tech’s sake, and not yet focused on delighting or engaging the shopper, or saving her time or money. So that ‘glue experience’ could, like the Internet of Things, also easily be 10 years away. And I fear it’s going to be up to one retailer to come along, an upstart, like a Moosejaw Mountaineering or the next Moosejaw, before the retail industry gets shaken out of its apathy when it comes to digital, mobile and store.”

Some chain retailers are innovating, though, with the use of touchscreen windows and tablet kiosks that help shoppers in-store. Not to mention add to the number of contexts and locations retailers must serve.

Schueler of Usability Sciences delivers the bottom line for the next five years and beyond. “Mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—will evolve,” he predicts. “Wearables and the Internet of Things eventually will disrupt. Analog in-store experiences will go digital. And businesses that embrace ‘contextual commerce’ will thrive.”

Follow Bill Siwicki, managing editor, mobile commerce, at Internet Retailer, at @IRmcommerce.