Who remembers Mystic Meg – the strange, droning, fortune-teller who used to guess the identity of lottery winners on the Saturday night lottery show?

Every week, I would sit in wonder as she told us of the age, gender and physical attributes of the likely winner. However, the wonder I had was not at her gift – but at the fact that if she really could see into the future, why didn't she simply pick the next set of lottery numbers and retire?

Of course, the parlour-trick parody is that Meg could no sooner predict the lottery numbers than I could. Crystal ball or not, seeing into the future is a pastime that many attempt but few, if any, master.

But, for the benefit of you dear readers, I have cast my runic stones, stared into the tea leaves of life and guarantee a prediction that will certainly happen in the very near future – and for some will mean wealth beyond a mere National Lottery win.

I sense movement as you creep ever nearer to the edge of your seats. I feel the anticipation as you await the future to be told. I hear the rumblings from afar as you mumble "just get on with it and tell us".

Here you are then. The life-changing, star-gazing, dead cert, nailed-on, sure-to-happen reality that is around the corner – the future is in your pocket. Or perhaps in your handbag.

I am talking about your mobile phone and the fact that we are on the cusp of the most important technology revolution since the first web browser in 1994 – the advent of mass, personalised mobile marketing specific to who you are, where you are and what you are doing.

Before long, the computer in your hand that we call a mobile phone will be the key to all you need – an on-the-spot guide to virtually everything.

It will tell you what's behind you, and how much discount you can get if you go there now.

It will direct you around foreign places, and find you what you want when you want it.

It will be a permanent, personal lifestyle guide and window to the world around you.

And this emerging reality, this advancing horizon, will grant those who understand it an abundance of riches. The commercial value of understanding where a customer might be and enticing them to you is beyond the ken of humble marketers – only the truly enlightened will reap its magnificence.

And who are they?

Apple, Microsoft and Google are already laying claim to this new mobile dawn. In hyperspace, these people own their own galaxies. They can see beyond the stars, and they realise that their shareholders' bloodlust for the next billion-dollar dividend will be satiated in the mobile space.

They will map us, overlay us, and converge us onto their single devices. A mobile, iPod, cameraphone, mapping, GPS, Bluetooth terminal that is an advertiser's dream.

So when it happens, and it will, remember where you heard it first.

The next big thing is already in your pocket.

Tony Stanton, chief executive of an agency called england