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eBay and PayPal gear for mobile commerce growth in 2013

Online retail giant eBay saw major gains during the 2012 holiday shopping season, largely due to the company’s focus on mobile commerce. eBay is predicting that its mobile payment volume in 2013 will reach new heights as it puts more focus on engaging consumers with mobile commerce services. eBay notes that PayPal, one of its primary subsidiaries, will have a large role to play in the mobile commerce growth the company is expecting to see in the coming year.

eBay predicts mobile payment volume to exceed $20 billion

eBay is expecting to see mobile payment volume grow to more than $20 billion in 2013. PayPal is expected to handle the majority, if not the entirety, of this mobile payment volume, similar to what the company had done during the 2012 holidays. In 2012, eBay reported some $14 billion in total revenue for the entire year,  up 21% of the revenue the company had generated in 2011. The company notes that one of the contributing factors to this growth was its focus on mobile commerce.

Company works on streamlining mobile services

In 2012, eBay mobile accounted for $13 billion in volume, according to CEO John Donahoe. The company’s various mobile applications attracted more than 4 million new users throughout the year, adding significant clout to the company’s already formidable presence in the mobile space. eBay is now working to streamline its mobile ventures, hoping to make them more accommodating of new customers and to bolster the mobile commerce services the company has to offer.

Consumers show interest in mobile commerce

PayPal is expected to add significant momentum to the mobile commerce plans of eBay. Consumers mostly had a positive experience with mobile commerce during the 2012 holidays, so eBay is likely to push for similar results near the end of this year. These consumers have shown their interest in shopping and making purchases using their mobile devices, thus setting up a great deal of promise for the 2013 holiday season.

This would bring sales through the channel up to $31 billion within a 4 year period.

Forrester Research has released its latest mobile commerce data, which has shown that mobile commerce currently represents a small fraction of total sales for retail companies and for the next few years, it is likely that it will grow, but still remain a small percentage of the whole.

The sale of physical goods and services over smartphones was small but notable last year.

In the United States, these mobile commerce purchases were worth $8 billion and made up 3 percent of total online sales and under 1 percent of the overall retail sales total. Forrester estimates that this numbers were driven higher by some of the top performers in this channel, such as eBay and Amazon, which have experienced billions of dollars in sales from wireless devices.

For the majority of American retailers, mobile commerce sales represent a lower portion of the whole.

Over the next four years, the total mobile commerce sales are expected to increase by 33 percent per year – said the Forrester Research data – until they reach $31 billion. This means that by 2017, they will make up 9 percent of online sales.

According to that same research company, at the time of their study, there were 132 million people in the United States that had a smartphone with an internet connection. However, only one in every four actually made a mobile commerce purchase. They speculated that the reason that this rate has remained as low as it has is because of the retailers themselves.

Forrester has identified retailers as the cause of their own mobile commerce struggle, saying that it can be too challenging for consumers to check out and pay for items on their smartphones to make it feel worth their while. They also pointed out that some retailers are too wrapped up in apps of which consumers are completely unaware.

Aside from Forrester’s own speculations, it has also been suggested that the design of the smartphones, themselves, may be partly to blame. Although some screens have wonderful image zooming capabilities, it can still be quite challenging for device users to be able to closely examine products, especially within the apparel sector.