Masaya Ueno, the director of Rakuten Asia has released a promising prediction for 2015 trends.
Rakuten, the massive e-commerce giant from Japan, has now released an official statement that has revealed that it has brought in $1.1 billion worth of revenue in Singapore via mobile commerce channels.
The company therefore feels that the Singapore market is a tremendously promising one for next year.
The director of Rakuten Asia, Masaya Ueno, who is also the company’s Country Manager for Singapore and the Head of the Business Development Division, explained that the country’s tremendous 80 percent adoption rate of smartphones has made it ready for a great deal more growth in mobile commerce. Smartphone shopping is already quite common in the country but the company feels that there remains a great deal more room for growth to continue throughout 2015.
The larger smartphones, nicknamed “phablets” are being called a driving force behind this mobile commerce trend.
According to Masaya Ueno, “Apple’s entry into the Phablet market with the iPhone 6 Plus and the launch of other phablets flagships like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 will help to drive the adoption of mobile shopping is Singapore as well.”
At the same time, Rakuten’s forecast also explained that the focus on ‘mobile-first’ is also spreading throughout the Asian Pacific region, where many consumers use their smartphones as their exclusive method of accessing the internet. The prediction underscored the fact that this will be an important m-commerce factor in 2015, as it shows that the trend in mobile shopping will not be exclusive to Singapore, but will also have considerable potential in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Rakuten explained that this mobile technology trend should be telling retailers that they simply cannot think that they can continue to ignore this fast moving segment of m-commerce, as consumers throughout that region turn away from their desktops in favor of their smaller screen handsets.
The Rakuten prediction is that far more retailers will rapidly begin an investment into mobile commerce in both the marketing and retail efforts, and that this will be easily seen in all of 2015.
While tablets may be the leaders in the mobile tech marketplace, their shipments are notably slowing.
Until now, t-commerce has been leading the way among mobile devices and the growth rate has only continued to climb, but it looks as though tablet shipments are now starting to lose steam and their growth is experiencing a significant decline.
There has been a far larger decline in the demand for tablets than had been predicted in Q1 2014.
Based on the size of the decline in t-commerce that has actually been experienced, when compared to what was predicted in the first quarter of the year, concerns are now being raised regarding what tablets and 2 in 1s will be facing in terms of additional challenges to the marketplace throughout the rest of the year. In fact, the International Data Corporation (IDC) has now decreased its worldwide tablet plus 2 in 1 forecast for 2014 to be 245.4 million units.
This represents a massive drop in the IDC t-commerce shipments forecast that had previously been made.
Last quarter, the IDC had released a prediction that 2014 would see 260.9 million unit shipments. Clearly, this represents a dramatic change in the direction that tablet sales are expected to take. Still, the IDC pointed out in its report that this forecast continues to represent a year over year growth rate of 12.1 percent.
While this is still a healthy rise, it is nowhere near the growth that was experienced in 2013, when tablet shipments had a year over year rise by 51.8 percent.
According to the IDC program vice president of devices and displays, Tom Mainelli, there are two primary issues that are causing the t-commerce marketplace to slow down. “First, consumers are keeping their tablets, especially higher-cost models from major vendors, far longer than originally anticipated. And when they do buy a new one they are often passing their existing tablet off to another member of the family.”
Secondly, he pointed out that as “phablets” – that is hybrids between smartphones and tablets which have screens larger than 5.5 inches – make a bigger splash in the market, consumers are starting to think twice about buying individual smartphones and tablets and are thinking about combining.
