Tag: ibm

Retailers avoiding the mobile space could miss out on a serious revenue opportunity

The holiday season is coming and U.S. retailers could be missing out on one of the greatest mobile shopping opportunities in recent history. A new report from Jumio predicts that retailers could miss out on $8.6 billion in revenue due to outdated mobile checkout solutions. Many retailers have made attempts to engage mobile consumers by offering them new payment solutions that are mobile-centric, but old and inefficient solutions could make it hard for consumers to actually purchase products online and in physical stores.

20% of all online sales made during the fourth quarter of this year may come from mobile devices

According to data from the National Retail Federation, holiday sales for 2014 are expected to reach $616.9 billion, growing 4% over what they had been during the 2013 holiday season. An estimated $105 billion in revenue is expected to come from e-commerce. Another report from IBM suggests that approximately 20% of all online sales made during the fourth quarter will come from a mobile device. Retailers that are not prepared to engage mobile consumers could lose out on a very promising opportunity.

Mobile commerce continues to experience strong growth in the US

Mobile commerce has become quite popular with consumers. Mobile shopping is often seen as more convenient and while most people continue to favor visiting physical stores, the demand for mobile payment services has been growing rapidly. Many consumers plan to do their holiday shopping online, using their mobile devices to research and discover products they may be interested in. Some will also be looking for ways to make their shopping experience more convenient and avoid crowds at stores. Mobile payment terminals can offer this convenience and may help make a retailer more attractive to consumers.

Outdated commerce systems cause frustration among consumers

The report notes that many people that shop online using a mobile device end up abandoning their purchases. This is due to frustrations with outdated commerce systems that are still being used by retailers. These systems make it difficult for people to complete transactions when they try to purchase products from their smartphones and tablets. Many of these systems are designed to be used on conventional computers and not mobile devices.

A recent study has revealed that these programs are leading gadgets to be wiped as a regular practice.

According to the Fiberlink division at IBM, and a recent data analysis that they have conducted, one of the biggest smartphone trends in BYOD programs is to remotely wipe mobile devices.

This feature is proving itself to be exceptionally popular among enterprise clients who run these programs.

The figures from Fiberlink have shown that among the users of the MaaS360 cloud platform, there are currently an average of 450 mobile devices that are being wiped on a daily basis. This makes the practice a considerable one among smartphone trends in businesses. This platform is based in Pennsylvania and is used for the management of millions of cell phones and other gadgets in enterprises worldwide.

Among smartphone trends in the enterprise community, this has become a sizeable one across all of its verticals.

What the data analysis showed was that while there are many different Mobile Device Management (MDM) features available through the MaaS360, it is the device wiping that has seen some of the largest growth across all of its verticals.

For every three minutes of the day, enterprises are now wiping another device. This means that in the average day, 450 smartphones and tablets are wiped, which represents a massive 130,000 in the last year. Moreover, Fiberlink pointed out that this represents the equivalent of between 10 and 20 percent of the total average device fleet for the firm in the last year.

What the firm means when it says that a “wipe” has been conducted, is either of two different activities. The first is a complete wipe, which was the case in about one of every three gadgets that were wiped. The second is a partial wipe, which is made up by the other two out of every three mobile devices.

The smartphone trends showed that approximately half of these remote wipes by businesses occur automatically while the other half is specifically initiated by an administrator. Among the top reasons given for the automatic wiping, the lead was that the gadget has become “jailbroken” (which has to do with Apple smartphones and tablets), as opposed to being lost or stolen.