Mobile e-commerce study shows large increase in transactions via SmartPhones

Web Trends Blogs

By Salar Golestanian @ Monday, January 10, 2011 :: 9:09 PM :: 560 Views :: 0 Comments ::

Last week we reported "Mobile Sales growing fast! Is your E-commerce App ready for SmartPhones?" Today we have more evidence for this trend and the future looks similarly bright for mobile shopping. Mobile commerce is the ability to buy and sell a product or service through a mobile device. With the increased usage of mobile phones, PDAs and smartphones, mobile commerce is starting to pick up speed. New applications for the iPhone and Blackberry and Android phones are leading the way for thiw growth. This topic covers the soon-to-be lucrative business of mobile commerce.

last week we talked about eBay reporting that mobile shopping on its app increased 134% this holiday season, and Amazon is bringing in $1 billion annually from mobile sales. The report by ABI Research found that mobile online shopping in US rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009. The same survey predicted that mobile would bring in $119 billion by 2015.

The mobile user is also able to access the online shopping sites in situations where the desktop is not available. Here are 3 examples:

Have you ever been to a shop wanting to purchase something and they were out of stock?
Have you ever walked into a shop and found something you wanted, but it was too big to carry home with you? You therefore thought of purchasing it from your favorite online store.
Have you ever been curious whilst shopping in the retail store, if the price advertised in the looked a little too high? That also could drive you out of the shop to investigate further.

In all these situations, the shopper could be encouraged to make the purchase on their Smartphone whilst on the move if the online shop is user friendly enough and they find is at the right price as well as the online store can deliver at a convenient time then why not purchase online. These kinds of shoppers have always existed, but the technology has only now become mature enough to allow such growth in mobile commerce.

However, above types of users always existed, so the main reasons for this mobile online shopping growth is firstly the maturity of the Mobile Operating Systems like iOS and Android and recently Windows Mobile 7, where they have brought the mobile browsing experience much closer to the desktop experience. Therefore, mobile internet can no longer be ignored if you want to be a serious player on the digital landscape. Few months ago, Morgan Stanley shared a great presentation by the name of "Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research"

The other reason for these big growth is in the relationship that online mobile shoppers have already have had with their favourite online retailer. The existing online mobile users are smart shoppers. For example These 'Smart Shoppers', using their Smartphones barcode scanner on the Amazon app to compare prices and as they find a better price, they proceed and do the purchase from Amazon. This happens whilst they are actually inside the retail store. This is too bad for the retail store as the shopper has checked out the product; they may have even talked to the sales person to ask questions about the product and yet purchased it online using their Smartphone.

Last week we reported on eBay statistic shared with us that eBay’s mobile app sold nearly $100 million of merchandise in the U.S. during the month before Christmas, which represents an increase of 134% over last year at the same time. Considering that last year all U.S. mobile sales from all retailers all year long totalled about $1.2 billion, eBay alone selling about 10% of that in one month likely signifies an impressive growth rate for mobile commerce in general this year.

Further to very interesting statistic shared with us that "eBay’s mobile app sold nearly $100 million of merchandise in the U.S. during the month before Christmas, which represents an increase of 134% over last year at the same time. Considering that last year all U.S. mobile sales from all retailers all year long totalled about $1.2 billion, eBay alone selling about 10% of that in one month likely signifies an impressive growth rate for mobile commerce in general this year."