Author: Julie Campbell

Mobile commerce adoption is on the rise

| June 27, 2016

A recent ComScore study revealed a positive trend in the use of m-commerce shopping channels.

ComScore has released the results of one of its newest studies. It showed that mobile commerce adoption was on the rise and usage increased by 40 percent. Moreover, mobile recorded a much higher growth than desktop. E-commerce rose by 11 percent during the same span of time.

Overall, the total discretionary retail growth was up by 4 percent during the first quarter of 2016.

The study revealed a 3 percent year over year increase in total digital commerce dollars share held by mobile. The mobile commerce adoption and use share increased from 16.9 percent in Q1 2015 to 18.6 percent in Q1 2016.

Consumers continue to spend only small amounts of money on m-commerce platform purchases. This, despite the fact that they use this method very frequently during the shopping journey. In fact, mobile shopping is considered to be a highly popular mainstream activity. However, data shows that consumers aren’t spending there.

Mobile commerce adoption is rapidly climbing but the spending over that channel isn’t rising as fast.

mobile commerce adoptionConsumers spend two thirds (66 percent) of their total retail time on smartphones. Equally, those same consumers spend only 19 percent of their total retail dollars over m-commerce shopping. Conversely, the opposite was true for desktop using consumers. Those shoppers spent 34 percent of their retail time on laptops and desktops. At the same time, they spent 81 percent of their retail dollars on those computers.

That figure represents a gap of 47 percent. Companies may consider evaluating that statistic as the months and years pass.

When it comes to mobile commerce adoption, the holiday shopping season in 2015 played a critical role. Retail traffic skyrocketed over digital channels. M-commerce outpaced e-commerce every single day from November 1 to the end of the year. Black Friday and Cyber Monday both saw well over 200 million visits in the retail category over mobile channels. As a whole, mobile shopping jumped by 60 percent from the 2014 holiday shopping season to that of 2015. There were 8.1 billion holiday shopping visits over mobile apps and 9.8 billion visits over mobile web last year.

Samsung mobile payments take different direction than rivals

| June 23, 2016

The Korean electronics company sees its wallet app as a way to sell its devices, not fee-based revenue generation.

Samsung mobile payments are taking on rivals in the United States by using a different approach from what already exists. The company explained its goal to use the wallet app to sell smartphones over collecting fees.

This is a drastically different perspective on mobile wallets when compared to top rival, Apple.

Apple uses its mobile wallet as a part of its overall ecosystem. That said, Apple Pay, like other smartphone payment apps, is struggling for widespread and mainstream adoption. Meanwhile, its top competition, Samsung mobile payments, is going in a new direction. Samsung Pay is a strategy to encourage consumers to buy the company’s devices.

As such, this move breaks away from the typical mobile wallet model. Usually, mobile payments generate revenue through fees paid by financial partners and/or merchants. In Samsung’s case, it is an added selling feature for smartphones, tablets and other gear.Samsung Mobile Payments - Samsung phone

Samsung mobile payments will not be collecting usage fees from its financial partners.

Conversely, Apple Pay is a mobile wallet that mainly generates income by requiring its partner banks and financial institutions to pay a small charge for every completed transaction. The actual figure has not been publicly released. Equally, some reports have indicated that in the United States, it is a fee of 0.15 percent of the transaction.

On the flip side, Samsung Pay does not require its financial partners to pay a fee for its use. Instead, the electronics company aims to make it appealing to consumers, merchants and banks. That way, it will become widely available for use and will be a selling feature for its devices. This strategy uses the mobile wallet as a sales feature, not a revenue generator unto itself.

According to Samsung Pay global vice president, Elle Kim, “We’re a hardware company, and at the end of the day I think what we’re trying to do is get people who hold (one of) our phones and use it…to just love it more.” It will be interesting to see how the Samsung mobile payments strategy works against the competition.