Although smartphones provide a very important channel, it’s the larger screens that bring in the big sales.
While smartphones may be attracting a great deal more attention from the media than tablet commerce, the story is notably different when it comes to the perspective of the retailer.
These merchants have recognized that the larger screens are the most important place for focus.
Tablet commerce is vital to retailers because these bigger mobile devices are used by consumers to do more of their online retail browsing than smartphones. Even though the penetration rate of smartphones is greater than that of tablets among consumers in the United States, the larger screens make up notably more retail traffic and sales than the smaller counterparts.
It is this knowledge that makes tablet commerce the most important channel in mobile.
BI Intelligence has recently released a report that examined the entire mobile commerce environment and determined that retailers have taken their time in differentiating between the performance of tablets and of smartphones. M-commerce as a whole and the individual branch of t-commerce provide different results, and merchants are only just now starting to recognize this and take action on what they know.
The report has made some recommendations for retailers and where they should be placing their focus in order to respect the importance of tablet commerce. The reason that they feel that they should prioritize the larger screen include:
• Higher order values than those made over smartphones and four times the overall revenue (at an average order value of $151 over tablets and $124 over smartphones).
• More overall traffic from larger screen devices.
• Greater retail traffic as consumers prefer visiting retail websites over tablets than over smartphones.
• Improved conversion rates as larger mobile devices convert seven times more than smaller when it came to paid search clicks in the United States. The iPad brought in the vast majority of those conversions.
• Better user demographic, as tablet computers are more likely to be owned by consumers and households that are within the higher income bracket, which are key targets for retailers.
In a deal that has been reported to be worth up to $150 million the Xbox maker is in even more deeply.
Microsoft is making technology news headlines with the latest rumors that have surrounded its move toward augmented reality, as claims are now being made that the company has paid as much as $150 million into the purchase of assets relating to AR and head mounted wearable technology.
It is believed that the assets were purchased by Microsoft from the Osterhout Design Group (ODG).
ODG is a technology company that creates various types of products for several markets, including consumer, military, and industrial. Microsoft had previously been in discussions to attempt to actually purchase the company, but has instead come up with the deal to purchase some of its IP, instead. The price of this acquisition is believed to be somewhere between $100 million and $150 million. It is strongly believed that augmented reality and wearable technology play a considerable role in this purchase.
This augmented reality and IP technology deal reportedly closed way back in November 2013.
At the same time, the patents were reported to have been handed over to Microsoft in January of this year. Among the patents that were reportedly snatched up by the tech giant are items described as “see-through near-eye display glasses including a partially reflective, partially transmitting optical element,” in addition to “video display modification based on sensor input for a see-through near-to-eye display.”
By the time that this article was written, Microsoft had not released any official comments about the reports that have been made about the AR technology or the patents. Therefore, it shouldn’t be considered to be carved in stone. However, the reports were made by sources that have been very accurate in the past.
If Microsoft did, indeed, obtain these wearable technology and augmented reality assets, then there are a very broad range of different possibilities for the ways in which they could be used. While some seem to think that it could be for gaming, more specifically for future Xbox releases, others are guessing that it may mean something more comparable to Google Glass. Until something official is actually released, there will be no way of knowing for certain.
