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December 21, 2010

A Rise in Mobile Commerce

As a society, we are on the cusp of the mobile commerce explosion. Mobile commerce has literally doubled in overall volume during the last 12 months, and it is expected to become a $24 billion a year industry by the year 2015 in the United States alone.  Therefore, this market needs to be taken seriously. A recent study found that 82 percent of American adults use their mobile phone on any given day of the year. Also, 57.8 million U.S. consumers use their mobile device or tablet to access the internet.ave

Mobile commerce does not only consist of ring tones, advertisements, and applications. In May 2010, the Mobile Marketing Association found that 6 percent of all mobile commerce sales were for physical products, not just digital downloadables. Furthermore, 6 percent of these sales were due to the use of a coupon given to mobile users.

Total mobile sales are expected to each $4.4 billion in 2011. At 6 percent, that equates to $265 million in mobile sales of tangible products. eBay alone generated $60 million in mobile revenue for 2009. They are projected $1.5 billion in mobile sales for 2010! This would show an increase of almost 200 percent in one year.

There are five specific mobile trends to keep an eye on:

• Increased market growth
• Slowing down of price decline
• Apple’s competitors
• High smartphone shipments
• The Android platform

The pace at which the market has increase is something to note. Also, the standard price of mobile applications are beginning to stabilize following price declines. In 2010, developers and users have focused on platforms other than Apple which lost 10 percent of its market share at the beginning of the year. This is primarily due to new competitors in the market.

Additionally, smartphone sales and shipments continue to remain high and could continue to rise. In fact, the Android platform is everywhere. This has shown tremendous growth and helped the mobile market expand.

No matter how you cut it, the mobile market is expanding. Customers are purchasing more tangible goods from their internet-enabled mobile phones. Therefore, more mobile merchants are jumping on board to grab a piece of the profitability pie. Although ecommerce merchants still need to differentiate, those that currently have a presence are off to a great start.

Tags: mobile commerce,  mobile phone,  mobile device,  mobile marketing,  smartphone