Here is the provocation every B2B executive needs to sit with: by 2028, 90% of B2B buying is projected to involve AI agent intermediation, channelling more than $15 trillion in spend through AI-facilitated exchanges. A growing proportion of those AI agents will be initiated, monitored, and managed from a mobile device. The organisations that are not structurally ready for that reality are not just behind on technology. They are becoming commercially invisible.
Mobile has quietly become the primary interface through which B2B buyers research suppliers, approve orders, check inventory, and manage procurement on the go. The global B2B eCommerce market is projected to reach $36 trillion by the end of 2026, growing at 14.5% CAGR. Gartner predicts that by 2028, three-quarters of B2B organisations will conduct their highest-value transactions through digital channels.
For a mobile-first audience, the more pointed question is not whether those transactions go digital, but rather how. It is whether they go mobile, and whether your organisation is ready when they do.
B2B Buyers Are Mobile Natives Now
Roughly 85% of B2B organisations now operate some form of eCommerce storefront or self-service portal. Digital channels are generating new revenue: 56% of B2B companies reported new product revenue growth through digital channels in 2025, while 63% saw aftermarket revenue expand. But the channel mix is shifting fast.
Over 71% of B2B buyers are now Millennials or Gen Z. These are not occasional smartphone users. They are people who comparison-shop, approve budgets, sign contracts, and manage supplier relationships on their phones as naturally as any other professional task. They are bringing those expectations directly into B2B purchasing, and they are running out of patience for organisations that cannot meet them there.
The consequences are already visible. 31% of B2B buyers switched vendors in the last six months. 75% say they would switch to a supplier offering a better online experience. In a mobile context, a better experience means fast-loading product pages, mobile-optimised catalogues, one-tap reordering, push notifications for order updates, and checkout flows that do not require a desktop to complete. Organisations that prioritise this close deals 31% faster. Those that do not are losing business to suppliers that do.
Where Most Organisations Actually Stand
Before addressing what to do, executives need an honest picture of where their organisation sits on the digital maturity curve. Four stages define the current B2B landscape, and fewer than 5% of organisations have reached the most advanced.
Stage 1: New to Digital (20 to 30% of B2B companies)
Digital activity exists but is inconsistent and disconnected. No mobile strategy, data duplication, and traditional selling that operates entirely separately from digital or mobile channels.
Stage 2: Table Stakes (30 to 40%)
Companies have launched digital channels and begun building repeatable processes, but mobile experience is an afterthought rather than a design principle. Primary focus is on operational efficiency.
Stage 3: Modern (20 to 25%)
Digital operates as a strategic growth driver with integrated systems and unified data. Mobile is part of the experience but not yet the primary lens through which buyer journeys are designed. Primary focus is on delivering exceptional buyer experiences that generate revenue.
Stage 4: AI-Ready (fewer than 5%)
Commerce is autonomous, predictive, and self-optimising. AI agents operate inside buyer and seller workflows, many of them initiated and managed through mobile interfaces. Autonomous selling, intelligent contracts, and agent-to-agent transactions are operational realities.
Most B2B organisations sit at Stage 2 or Stage 3. The gap between Stage 3 and Stage 4 is not primarily a technology gap. It is a data, infrastructure, and mobile readiness gap, and the work to close it starts well before deploying AI tools.
The Foundation Everything Depends On: Data
Knowing where your organisation sits on the maturity curve is only useful if it points to where action is required first. For the majority of B2B organisations at Stage 2 or Stage 3, the single most consequential investment is not AI tooling. It is the data foundation that determines whether any investment, including mobile, delivers reliable returns.
Only 42% of manufacturing leaders rate their data quality as excellent. A further 69% express doubt about whether their data is even usable for AI applications. In a mobile commerce context, this problem is amplified. A mobile buyer searching a product catalogue on their phone expects instant, accurate results. An AI assistant responding to a voice query on a mobile device needs clean, structured data to surface the right answer. Poor data does not just slow things down; it can also cause problems. It destroys the experience at the moment that matters most. On mobile, where screen space is limited, and buyer patience is short, data that fails any of these tests loses the sale immediately.
Solving this requires treating data as a continuous operational discipline. Data must be unified and centralised, structured for AI and automation, accessible via APIs for real-time mobile workflows, governed and compliant at scale, and enriched regularly to prevent decay. Organisations that build this foundation are not just preparing for AI. They are making every mobile interaction faster, more accurate, and more trustworthy.
Brand Trust on a Small Screen
Trust remains the number one business driver when a B2B buyer decides to sign a contract, according to Dentsu. On mobile, trust is communicated differently and more immediately than on any other channel. In a mobile context, there is rarely a second chance. A slow-loading page, an inconsistent product description, a checkout flow that breaks on iOS, or a chatbot that gives a wrong answer erodes confidence in seconds.
As AI increasingly powers the customer-facing elements of B2B commerce, from mobile search results and product recommendations to in-app quoting and automated responses, how an organisation uses AI on mobile directly shapes buyer loyalty.
Four principles define trusted mobile AI execution:
Reliability: AI outputs must be accurate and consistent across devices and sessions.
Transparency: Buyers should understand when AI is responding rather than a human.
Consistency: AI-driven content must maintain brand voice across the app, mobile web, and messaging channels, and
Human oversight: For large contracts and complex transactions, human escalation must be readily accessible from within the mobile experience itself.
The brands winning B2B trust on mobile in 2026 are not those with the most sophisticated AI. They are those whose mobile presence feels stable, coherent, and easy to navigate under real working conditions, on a phone, in a warehouse, between meetings, or in the field.
The Infrastructure Behind a Seamless Mobile Experience
A seamless mobile B2B experience does not happen at the front end. It is the visible result of an infrastructure built on unified, real-time data flowing between systems that were historically never designed to communicate with each other. A significant share of B2B decision-makers identify legacy commerce systems as the single biggest barrier to their digital success. That barrier is felt nowhere more acutely than in mobile commerce, where latency, data inconsistency, and integration failures translate directly into a broken user experience.
An API-first modular commerce platform connects ERP, PIM, CRM, and OMS into a real-time ecosystem, creating the architecture on which mobile capabilities can be built and iterated quickly. AI is also transforming ERP integration itself, automatically detecting data inconsistencies, synchronising inventory in real time, and removing the manual reconciliation that has historically made mobile commerce data unreliable. The result is a platform that can support high-frequency mobile interactions, from one-tap reordering to real-time pricing updates, without compromising performance or accuracy.
And none of it works without the right people. 75% of B2B enterprises plan to increase spending on external expert and analyst relations in 2026, recognising that AI-generated insight requires human credibility to be trusted. Internally, the organisations pulling ahead are investing in teams that understand both the commercial and mobile dimensions of these capabilities, not just the technology.
Eight Predictions Shaping Mobile B2B Commerce in 2026
Shifting Buyer Behaviour
First, agentic AI enters buying and selling workflows in earnest. By the end of 2026, AI will operate inside procurement and sales workflows rather than simply informing them. For mobile, this means purchasing agents running on smartphones, sales reps using AI co-pilots in the field, and service agents resolving issues through mobile interfaces without human initiation.
Second, younger buyers accelerate the adoption of mobile-first commerce. 79% of B2B companies now sell directly to consumers, up from 66% in 2024. With over 71% of B2B buyers being Millennials or Gen Z, mobile-optimised ordering, transparent pricing, personalised offers, and frictionless checkout are no longer differentiators. They are the entry requirements.
Third, buyer loyalty shifts as zero-click mobile commerce takes hold. AI assistants on mobile devices, including Siri, Gemini, and Copilot, are increasingly the first point of product discovery in B2B purchasing. The transition to Answer Engine Optimisation requires structuring product information and technical documentation so mobile AI systems can surface it reliably and instantly. Companies achieving this gain automatic preferential placement in AI-assisted mobile buying workflows.
Infrastructure Imperatives
Fourth, mobile scalability becomes a strategic differentiator. Conversational agents, personalisation engines, and autonomous procurement systems introduce high-frequency automated requests that legacy platforms were not built to handle on mobile. Cloud-native modular architectures that serve structured product data instantly and integrate seamlessly with pricing and inventory systems will separate the leaders from the laggards.
Fifth, AI makes ERP integration smarter, keeping mobile commerce data accurate in real time. For field sales teams and mobile buyers checking availability on the go, the difference between real-time inventory data and data thatis 12 hours old is the difference between closing and losing a deal.
Sixth, AI drives faster mobile implementation cycles. Rather than years-long replatforming projects, B2B organisations will deploy targeted mobile AI capabilities through phased MVP implementations, iterating quickly and building confidence incrementally.
Redefined Commercial Models
Seventh, assisted selling on mobile becomes the dominant B2B sales model. Sales reps in the field, armed with AI co-pilot tools on their smartphones, can surface customer history, get real-time pricing recommendations, and close deals without returning to the office. AI makes every mobile sales interaction faster and more effective without removing the human judgment that complex B2B transactions require.
Eighth, mobile payments orchestration reshapes the B2B transactional experience. AI will increasingly manage B2B checkout and payment processes end-to-end through mobile interfaces, streamlining invoicing, trade credit, and order approvals with greater accuracy and flexibility. What has historically required desktop processing and manual follow-up is moving to the device in the buyer’s hand.
The Mobile Imperative
The five foundations that determine B2B digital maturity in 2026, namely data quality, brand trust, unified commerce infrastructure, customer centricity, and people, are not abstract strategic priorities. They are the practical determinants of whether a mobile B2B experience works or fails at the moment a buyer reaches for their phone.
The organisations that will lead B2B commerce through 2026 and beyond are not necessarily those with the most advanced AI. They are those who have built the foundations making AI reliable and trustworthy at the point of interaction, which in 2026 is increasingly a mobile screen. In a world where AI agents are doing the buying and mobile devices are doing the managing, structural readiness is not a future aspiration. It is a present-tense commercial requirement.
