He called the company, yes, MTT, Mobile Travel Technologies Ltd, and he based it in Dublin. You don’t need to drink a lot of Guinness to come up with that name. Says what it does, simply.

Having worked with companies such as Worldspan and Sabre Holdings, he saw a future that would be increasingly mobile and decided to take the plunge to become an entrepreneur.

Today, Samuels is probably laughing all the way to the bank because after several years of people declaring “this is the year of mobile”, well, mobile has now become the thing everyone wants to talk about and is anxious to get into given that customers are buying smartphones and hand-held devices faster than Steve Jobs can make them.

And who do you get when you want someone to talk mobile? Well, Samuels of course which is where I met him for the second time this year, speaking at the China Travel Distribution Summit.

So after so many years of evangelizing mobile, and now that it’s here, what is he evangelizing about these days, I asked him.

“The next phase of mobile,” he says. “Now mobile services are taking over from the regular web and we are just scratching the surface. The implications are enormous – on your customer’s journey and his in-destination experiences, and how we will manage our lives between different devices and the role the cloud will play in all of that.

“Different devices offer different experiences and we might do part of the process on the desktop, pass that information to the cloud, and then manage part of it on mobile. This is an important development.”

By 2014, he says, more people will access the web through mobile than through desktop and 15-20% of transactions will be on mobile.

These are shifts the industry needs to watch, he says. Big players like eBay and Amazon are seeing huge traction in mobile transactions and are giving people the confidence to purchase on their mobiles devices. A player like Facebook also has a big role to play because more people are accessing it via mobile.

Samuels says the industry should also watch what Google is doing with mobile and Apple with its iTravel patents should also not be ignored. “They have disrupted the music business and they could figure out what to do in travel next.”

So how can a small player compete, I asked, because it is getting increasingly expensive to manage all these different channels?

“The answer is to do a little and do it bloody well,” says Samuels, citing Hotel Tonight as an example. (See article)

“Take a slice of your business and apply it to mobile,” he advises.

So if I were a player like airfares.com.sg, which is one of Singapore’s leading air fares site owned by Misa Travel, what could I do?

“Well,” says Samuels, “if let’s say 20% of their business is to Thailand, then they could just build a Thailand app that gives their customers information on the destination.”

And if you were a boutique hotel in Samui, you could develop an app and encourage your guests when they check-in to download it. “Then have great information on the app, book a spa, take photos and share with your friends and you can push information or take instant guest feedback through the app.”

Having said all that, Samuels admits there is still a lot of uncertainty over mobile and where it will go next. “We are at the cusp of it. There are a few big plays and then a stack of others. In China, mobile usage is huge and customer adoption is way ahead of what companies are doing. They still have a long way to go in terms of investments in e-commerce and websites.”

And one critical challenge exists – as fast as the mobile industry is growing, there is a lack of talent to keep pace with needs.

“The number of mobile commerce developers is a very small pool. It’s a new industry and it’s moving incredibly fast and it’s not easy to find people with expertise at the sharp end who can build platforms that are scalable, secure and able to handle large volumes.”

Note: Gerry Samuels will be speaking at the WIT Conference on mobile (of course) where he will share a few big ideas and how you can get that X-factor going.