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Black Friday mobile commerce war starts early at Walmart

The retail giant has moved its Cyber Monday sale to the day after Thanksgiving to keep competitive.

Walmart has announced that its Black Friday mobile commerce will be the new Cyber Monday this year. The move was taken to help to avoid a detrimental shopping lull over the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Instead of making people wait for online sales, Walmart is evening out the in-store and mobile experience.

Many have speculated that dragging out Black Friday mobile commerce is a move to compete with Amazon. That online marketplace has offered stiff competition to Walmart. As Amazon operates exclusively online, it has had a considerable advantage over this vital holiday shopping long weekend.

Black Friday Mobile Commerce Shoppers are now eyeing the retailer to find out precisely what the deals will be. This isn’t the first time Walmart moved online and mobile commerce ahead from Cyber Monday. Last year, its online sales were launched on a Cyber Sunday instead. Promotions began at 6pm that evening and carried over into the next day.

This Black Friday mobile commerce sale will also reveal a range of new Walmart online shopping features.

This holiday shopping season will also represent the first real test to Walmart’s massive online overhaul. It has made widespread changes to its standard website as well as its mobile shopping experience and app. Moreover, it has a considerably larger number of items available for sale online. Reportedly, this includes approximately 23 million items. Last year at this time, that figure was 8 million items.

A sizeable portion of that increase is due to the rising number of marketplace sellers. There are around 3,000 marketplace sellers on Walmart.com at the moment. This means that shoppers will be able to purchase items on the website beyond what they’d even find in stores.

Recently, Walmart reported that its online and mobile commerce sales had increased by 20.6 percent. It would be safe to say that its website overhaul played a notable role in that growth. This is particularly true as this year’s first fiscal quarter saw only 7 percent growth.

Now, Walmart is looking to Black Friday mobile commerce to up the ante from last year’s holiday season price war.

Mobile commerce adoption is slower in the United States than the United Kingdom

Americans appear to be more hesitant to use their smartphones to make shopping purchases.

The most recent data from tech firm Ve Interactive has shown that mobile commerce adoption is greater in the U.K. than in the U.S. When it comes to online shopping, British shoppers seem to look to their devices more to make their purchase than Americans.

The m-commerce trends data was the result of a data analysis from more than 4,000 online companies.

The data showed that mobile commerce adoption has been greater in the United Kingdom to the point that it has surpassed desktop. U.K. shoppers now prefer to buy products and services using their smartphones than on their laptops and desktops. Mobile purchases now make up 58.7 percent of purchases in the United Kingdom. Comparatively, 54.6 percent of Americans are still using their desktops or laptops to buy. In the United States, mobile devices haven’t quite made it into the top spot yet.

This has gone against many mobile commerce adoption predictions made in the United States.

Mobile Commerce Adoption in the UKPredictions about the takeover of mobile shopping in the U.S. have been made for some time. That said, the reality has been much slower to develop. While growth has been quite strong, the data from Ve Interactive has shown that U.K. m-commerce has been maturing much more quickly than it has in the U.S.

There have been a number of theories to explain why the trend is notably stronger in one market than the other. Among them, one of the top considerations has been the simple fact that a larger percentage of the British population has smartphones than the American population. At the same time, the percentage of people in the U.K. who have laptops and desktops is falling at a faster rate.

Equally, smartphone adoption was faster earlier in the U.K. than in the U.S. This means that among the people who do have smartphones, the British have had a longer period of time in which to become accustomed to using their devices for a spectrum of daily activities.

That said, the official start to the holiday shopping season in the United States is nearly here. Many industry analysts expect that this time will be defining for mobile commerce adoption. It could soon be that the trends will see a significant shift in the U.S. as consumers begin purchasing in greater amounts.