Tag: mobile commerce

Mobile commerce may have a role to play in company’s future

Alibaba is one of the largest e-commerce businesses in the world and currently dominates the Chinese market. As a native to China, Alibaba was able to succeed in establishing itself as the country’s premier e-commerce businesses due to the lack of competition coming from companies like Amazon and eBay, which had been almost entirely exclusive to western societies in the past. In May of this year, Jack Ma, the company’s founder, stepped down as CEO of Alibaba and was succeeded by Jonathan Lu. Lu has remained relatively reserved concerning the future of the company, but believes that it must adapt in order to retain its leadership in the e-commerce sector, and that means growing more accommodating of mobile commerce.

Competition could force more focus on mobile services

Jonathan Lu and Jack Ma share a many of the same ideologies when it comes to e-commerce and business. Both have been working together for several years and both have taken note of the rising importance that mobile commerce is playing among consumers. With more people beginning to rely heavily on mobile devices, the need for Alibaba to provide comprehensive mobile commerce services to these consumers is becoming too important to ignore. This is especially true as both Amazon and eBay look to provide such services to consumers and find some foothold in the Chinese market.

Alibaba expected to go public in near future

Alibaba already has some mobile payment platforms in place, but the company is beginning to feel pressure to become more aggressive on this front, especially if it plans to go public in the relatively near future. Since 1999, Alibaba has been a privately owned company, but that is likely to change in the coming years under Lu’s leadership. If the company where to go public, its approach on mobile commerce could generate a great deal of traction with investors due to the popularity of mobile technology and mobile-centric services.

Public offering has not yet been announced

Lu has thus far only alluded to Alibaba going public in the future. Before the company launches a public offering, it is likely to take steps to ensure that its mobile commerce foundation is well suited to the current needs of the market. This in itself could be a time consuming endeavor due to the changing interests of consumers and the increasingly problematic security issues that exist within the mobile commerce field.

eMarketer has reduced its forecasts for the use and value of these transactions this year and onward.

Even as the mobile payments industry continues to insist that it is on the cusp of a massive explosion in use, eMarketer has slashed its growth estimates in half for the remainder of the year.

In October 2012, the firm had predicted that the market would reach the $2.12 billion mark this year.

However, in their latest report, which was only just released, it has reduced that figure to $1 billion, instead. Between 2011 and 2012, mobile payments had experienced a tripling in its transactions. However, eMarketers’ initial growth estimates have now been scaled back considerably as it witnesses an ever larger number of issues in the way of the adoption of these transactions.

Mobile payments struggles continue in the form of adoption problems, delays and a “congested landscape”.

One of the primary factors contributing to the slow adoption of mobile payments is the companies within that industry. There are a tremendous number of players, each of which have their own competing technologies. This lack of a standard or a universal format is causing both consumers and businesses to feel confused about the industry as a whole and is leading them to hesitate before even considering adopting its use.

eMarketer now feels that it will take until 2016 for mobile payments transactions to reach the $20 billion level. This is a full year longer than their previous forecast. At that rate, however, it could still mean that by the end of 2017, it may be able to reach $58 billion, which is certainly nothing to laugh at.

It should be noted that while adoption isn’t exploding as many predictions had thought, mobile payments remains and extremely hot space at the moment. The chance to redefine the way that people pay for the products and services that they purchase is a tremendous opportunity for startups, big tech companies, and large financial institutions alike. It is the first time that this kind of opportunity has opened up since debit cards joined credit cards as being highly popular forms of plastic transaction at a point of sale.