Smartphones have become the standard in smaller companies and are generating $65 billion in annual savings.
It has now reached the point that nearly all small businesses are using mobile technology in the form of smartphones, with 94 percent claiming that they are using them, this year, which is still a notable increase over the high level that was recorded last year, at 85 percent.
Millions of small to midsized businesses (SMBs) across the United States are taking advantage of the tech.
These SMBs are using the smartphones to be able to save a considerable amount of time and money. A recent survey which was commissioned jointly by AT&T and by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) estimated that every year this mobile technology is saving SMBs $67.5 billion. This includes not only the use of the mobile devices, themselves, but also tablets and apps.
The survey looked into both the time and the money saved by the use of mobile technology.
Among all of the different types of mobile tech, smartphones alone are saving small to midsized businesses the largest amount of money ($32.3 billion) and even time (at an estimated 1.24 billion hours). Tablets came in second, with a savings of $19.6 billion per year and an estimated 754.2 million hours. Mobile apps are saving $15.6 billion per year and an estimated 599.5 million hours.
According to Karen Kerrigan, the CEO and council president of SBE, “Clearly, we are at a point where entrepreneurs now look first to communications technologies and innovations for solutions to improve productivity, cut costs and better manage and engage with customers.” She added that this is money and time that can all be redirected back into the business and improving market innovation while boosting sales.
The report on the study showed that over half of all small businesses say that they are currently using mobile technology in the form of apps. Among those who are using applications, 91 percent say that they use them for time savings, while two out of every three claim that money is being saved in this way.
Applications are beginning to lose out to mobile sites when it comes to consumer shopping behaviors.
According to some of the latest statistics that were presented in a report on a recent study, consumers are now visiting m-commerce websites more frequently than apps, though they are more likely to make an actual purchase using the application.
This suggests that brands hoping for the greatest mobile shopping success may need to focus on both channels.
This also suggests that the previously recommended decision for brands to place all of their concentration on mobile app development in order to succeed in m-commerce may no longer be the ideal path. This is because the majority of smartphone users would prefer to interact with stores on their devices using websites and not applications. This is particularly true when it comes to informing themselves about the brand, store, shop locations, and products, for example.
The study looked into the way that consumers use m-commerce in order to interact with brands.
It was conducted by ICM Research, which surveyed more than 1,300 smartphone owners. It asked them about their interaction with a rather limited sample of 13 different retailers, over their smartphones. Across 12 of those 13 retailers, the websites were the most commonly used mobile shopping option. The only exception, the last of those retailers, was eBay, where the app received the largest amount of traffic.
The company that experienced the smallest number of mobile app users was Boots. Only 8 percent of the smartphone users who interacted with that brand and took part in the study did so by way of the app. Comparatively, 65 percent of them used the mobile website for this purpose. The retailer, Next, known for its fashions, experienced the second lowest use of its app – 11 percent – when compared to the interactions over its mobile website – 62 percent.
On the other hand, eBay’s m-commerce app was used by 52 percent of the respondents, whereas 35 percent of the respondents said that they interacted with that brand over their mobile browsers. Jamie Belnikoff, associate director at ICM Research, pointed out that the degree to which consumers seemed to prefer websites to apps surprised him.
