Author: Julie Campbell

Holiday season m-commerce rose by 26 percent this year

| December 22, 2016

New Salmon data suggests that more online shoppers are looking to smartphones and tablets.

Salmon has released the results of its new research, showing that holiday season m-commerce rose by 26 percent this year. The Christmas shopping period has had U.K. shoppers turning to their smartphones and tablets to check prices, products and even to buy.

The increases began on Black Friday when mobile orders spiked with the launch of the shopping season.

According to Salmon research data, 53 percent of survey respondents said holiday season m-commerce made their shopping “easier and more convenient.” Another 57 percent of consumers in the U.K. said they would be prepared to embrace automated purchasing called Programmatic Commerce within 2 years.

Holiday Season M-commerceOn average, consumers in the United Kingdom were shopping online nine times per week, but this increased throughout the holiday shopping season. Mobile traffic increases suggests that consumers used m-commerce to fit their gift shopping into their very busy schedules.

As holiday season m-commerce approached Christmas, it continued to grow in its use.

Salmon recorded a growing shift toward mobile traffic and orders the nearer Christmas approached. Ever since Black Friday, mobile devices were leading in online retail traffic. Of all online traffic, 53 percent came from smartphones alone. In total, smartphones and tablets represented 68 percent of the traffic recorded at retail sites.

On the whole, this represents a 26 percent increase in the amount of retail mobile traffic when compared to 2015. This closely reflects the increase in mobile commerce use that was established on Black Friday, when 68 percent of the online retail traffic and 51.2 percent of the online orders came from smartphones and tablets. This represented the first year that mobile devices brought in more sales than desktops and laptops.

Comparatively, the holiday season m-commerce growth rate had been 14 percent more online orders than the figures from 2014. More than 8 million people throughout the United Kingdom have been using digital technology to shop on a daily basis. That represents 16 percent of the country’s population. Forty nine percent of the Salmon survey respondents said that technology (including smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops and others) has “made the shopping process faster.”

Magic Leap augmented reality demo draws praise and skepticism

| December 13, 2016

The long awaited product demonstration has been accused of consisting of smoke and mirrors.

For a very long time, the industry has been waiting for the first Magic Leap augmented reality demonstration. There has been a great deal of secrecy surrounding the development of this brand’s technology. This has allowed the hype to build substantially over the many months.

The augmented reality demonstration has gone viral over YouTube, promising an astounding experience.

What was known about the tech under development was that Magic Leap augmented reality was going to be different from anything else out there. The company has been promising to change the way we think of AR. With such dazzling promises, it was clear that anything produced would not be on market shelves at any time soon.

This concept was only reinforced when beta testers were given access to early versions of the tech concept and were required to use a considerable amount of hardware just to make it work.

Now that Magic Leap augmented reality demonstrations have been made, the brand is facing stiff criticism.

Nobody assumed that the Magic Leap marketing would be precisely what consumers would be seeing when the hardware was produced. However, the company is now being criticized for going far overboard in their simulations. The public was promised an unbelievable experience and that’s exactly what the demo is suggesting might be the case – it’s not to be believed.

The video made to simulate what Magic Leap would have to offer included the work of a special effects firm. This set expectations very high and may make it very difficult for the brand to be able to deliver. The March 2015 viral video took in 3.5 million views. However, reports quoting former employees of the company revealed that the game illustrated in the video didn’t actually exist.

The demonstration of the current Magic Leap augmented reality experience is less than mesmerizing. As much as it is still advanced, impressive tech, it continues to rely on a large and clunky helmet that uses a number of cables to wire it to a powerful computer. The goal is to one day compress that tech to hardware that is more “spectacle-like”.