• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, May 26, 2015

While mobile continues to grow across the board, mobile commerce is by far the prime engine of growth.

More than half of the $41 billion invested in mobile in the last 12 months went to mobile commerce related sectors, according to a new report.

Even as mobile advertising readies to leapfrog in-app purchases in a few years to move from third to second in the overall revenue stream, commerce is number one by a lot, according to Digi-Capital.

Mobile commerce sales passed $200 billion last year, with Digi-Capital forecasting overall mobile internet growth from $300 billion last year to $850 billion in three years.

Mobile commerce in Asia passed the U.S. in 2014 and by 2018 Asian users will account for almost half of more than $600 billion spent on goods and services using mobile devices.

To give you an idea of the scope and scale of the Asian mobile market, Wanda E-commerce, a joint venture of retailer Dalian Wanda, Tencent and Baidu, were worth more than $3 billion within four months of being founded and before it had even sold anything

Mobile ad spending could top $85 billion in three years, still well below the size of m-commerce, according to the Digi-Capital forecast.

Mobile advertising in the U.S. leads other markets due to the higher spend by American advertisers. For example, mobile advertising revenue in the U.S. will be higher than China, Japan and South Korea combined by 2018, says Digi-Capital.

Consumer app revenue is projected to grow from more than $30 billion now to $75 billion in three years. Games accounted for about three fourths of global app revenue last year and Android passed iOS revenue for the first time.

While all the numbers around mobile keep going up, it continues to be commerce that leads the way.