Tag: mobile commerce trends

Android users lag in importance behind Apple customers in mobile commerce

As opportunities in mobile commerce continue to grow and change, retailers consistently say that Apple consumer rule mobile commerce despite lower smartphone sales. However, it appears that though iPhone users are a minority they are far more likely to use their smartphones to make purchases and otherwise engage in mobile commerce.

Lucrative mobile commerce business

Apple seems to have bigger visibility with iPhones, but sales for Android powered phones accounted for 52.5 percent of smartphone sales and iPhones made up just 34.3 percent. Those figures can be misleading through, because Apple has huge gains and sales in the tablet market with the iPad alone dominating with 76 percent of the market share. Android and other manufacturers make up the rest.

However, that does not account for those actually using their smartphones to make mobile commerce transactions. These are essentially payments made by use of the smartphone – allowing some consumers to leave their wallet at home. Apple’s iPhone users may be a smaller crowd, but they are by far the most likely to use a smartphone for a purchase rather than whipping out the credit card or paying in cash.

The difference is in the user

Though iPhones account for lower sales, they are higher priced than most Android powered smartphones. In essence, those with less expendable income are far more likely to get a less expensive Android when smartphone shopping. The iPhone user is more into using the smartphone for all of the capacities it possesses and are more likely to be up to trying newer trends like mobile commerce transactions for simply buying coffee at a corner shop. Android users are in on the action, but are far behind iPhone consumers in cash to spend and on the willingness to try new ways of spending it.

Kevin Edwards of Affiliate Window said, “Apple users are typical early adopters. They’re generally tech-savvy individuals who embrace new ways of interacting and transacting online.” He also theorizes that Apple customers are more comfortable about shopping and more confident in shopping online. Not only are iPhone users more active in mobile commerce, the same can be said for iPad users as well.

The results of a recent poll have shown that those who use mobile most aren’t shopping with their devices.

Over the last few weeks, m-commerce security has been seeing a great deal of attention, but despite the tremendous changes that have been made in order to ensure that data remains protected when shoppers are making their purchases, consumers in Europe are still not considering their smartphones and tablets to be the ideal methods to use when they shop.

This recent survey was conducted in order to better understand European consumers and their mobile behaviors.

The company behind the poll was TechWeekEurope. It reached out to its readership in order to obtain their feedback in a number of different areas of m-commerce and to describe their opinions and behaviors over the most recent holiday shopping season. It aimed at understanding not only mobile behaviors, but those in the overall e-commerce sphere.

The m-commerce survey was performed following the very end of the Christmas shopping hype.

What it discovered was that a mere 10 percent of the respondents had used a smartphone or tablet for making the majority of their holiday purchases. In fact, m-commerce was ranked in fifth place when compared with the popularity of other channels where purchases can be made.

The most popular channel was the online shopping category, in which 43.8 percent of the respondents made the majority of their holiday purchases over their laptops or desktop PCs. On the other hand 25.6 percent of the participants in the survey said that they went to brick and mortar retail shops in order to make their Christmas shopping purchases. These were many times greater than the participation in m-commerce as a primary shopping method.

The m-commerce poll went on to discover that although the participants were from a highly tech-savvy demographic that was likely to use its smartphones and tablets comfortably and for a number of different purchases, they were not enchanted with shopping directly through their devices. This was unexpected, as it had been anticipated that those who use the devices most would be those most likely to shop with them.