Last week, TechCrunch ran a story on Eric Schmidt's furturistic vision of ecommerce. Here's an excerpt:

In Schmidt's "Commerce Fantasy" you're driving down the street, and somehow your phone knows you need new pants. Roll with me here ... The phone somehow realizes there's a pants store on the left and a pants store on the right and knows that through Google Offers the store on the right has the cheapest pants deal. Your GPS says,"Turn right for your pants." When you walk in the store, its system understands it's you and that you need new pants and so the salesperson comes out with your pants, of course. You tap your phone to pay, and boom, pants.

From Eric Schmidt's Commerce Fantasy | TechCrunch
Referenced Mon Aug 08 2011 09:26:49 GMT-0600 (MDT)

The focus of the piece is how mobile payments need to change for this to become reality. What caught my eye was the scenario itself--the focus on intent ("I need pants") and the automatic processing of multiple offers to provide the customer with the best deal in the current context.

The idea is not unlike the 4th party offer application, I wrote about a while back that I built on Kynetx. The mobile aspects of Schmidt's scenario present interesting twists to the story including the opportunity for mobile payments and identity.