A new report from Trendforce has shown that this year will have wallet apps taking off.
Research firm, TrendForce, has released a report in which its researchers have forecasted that mobile payments systems will be taking off at full throttle this year, which will come to a considerable relief to the financial institutions, retailers, tech companies, and other parties that have made massive investments into this tech.
As of yet, mobile wallets have yet to take off with consumers, despite the entry of Apple into the space.
The report showed that with both Samsung and Apple entering into the mobile payments ecosystem with a heavy push, it is likely that there will be a sizeable growth in this area that will propel it far beyond the level it had reached last year. In 2015, the total revenues that were brought in by the worldwide mobile wallet market are estimated, by TrendForce, to have reached $450 billion. That said, it is predicting that this figure will have made a far greater achievement by the end of this year. In fact, it is expecting that smartphone based payments will have reached a tremendous 37.8 percent year over year growth rate.
This will mean that mobile payments will have been able to hit the $620 billion mark, worldwide, this year.
Next year, the growth rate is expected to decrease, though it will still remain quite high, at a predicted 25.8 percent. The year after, it will drop again but will remain healthy at 19.2 percent and in 2019, that will slide again but will still grow by 16.1 percent. In the last year of the forecast, there will still have been a growth of $10.8 billion over what it had been the year prior.
When it comes to the success of Apple Pay as a mobile wallet option, both that company and many analysts continue to say that it will depend on how receptive China becomes to the brand and to that specific wallet app.
The report indicated that it will be Samsung Pay and Apple Pay that will make up a tremendous chunk of the smartphone based payment market and those two companies have been working hard to try to carve out as much of China as they possibly can. This has been a very challenging battle as both companies have manage to strike a deal with the government operated Chinese banking card payments processor, China UnionPay. These virtually simultaneous partnerships will mean that Chinese customers will have the choice between these two giants and their mobile payments services.
A recent report has shown that retailers are struggling to boost site use among smartphone based shoppers.
Though it may seem quite easy to applaud the growth of mobile shopping and to feel that it is simple to hop on board and offer people a great m-commerce experience, provided that the site is smartphone-friendly, retailers are discovering that customer habits make things more challenging than anticipated.
Among the main problems is that shoppers are less likely to browse around when they use mobile devices.
A recent study, conducted by SimilarWeb, found that people using mobile shopping are viewing a smaller number of pages per site visit. Last year, the average online shopper using a desktop or a laptop viewed an average of 8.3 pages per site visit. That said, the average shopper using m-commerce channels such as smartphones and tablets saw only 5.8 pages. When it comes to trying to encourage people to add more to their carts, that represents a considerable reduction in opportunity for retailers.
The research also found that mobile shopping cuts down on the length of time of the visit, as well.
SimilarWeb determined that when shopping over desktop or laptop, people would browse around for an average of 6 minutes and 50 seconds on a retail site in 2015. However, when using mobile devices, that length of time fell considerably, plummeting to only 4 minutes and 29 seconds.
According to the firm’s digital insights manager, Pavel Tuchinsky, “Engagement and time on site has not been maintained in the transition toward mobile shopping.” That said, Tuchinsky also felt that there was a solution to this challenge. He explained that “Retailers must continue to embrace the rapid change towards mobile, including better checkout flows, and integration between desktop and mobile sites.”
It is no mystery that mobile shopping is becoming exceptionally important to shoppers. In the United States, it’s estimated that about 55.8 percent of all retail site visits came from users of smartphones and tablets in 2015. It will be up to retailers to try to keep on top of these trends and to better understand what their customers want if they intend to stay ahead in online sales.
