Tag: smartphone shopping

eMarketer has now released new data that has show that consumers in the U.S. aren’t keeping up with the globe.

Some of the latest data issued by eMarketer has revealed that American consumers purchased an estimated total of $48 billion of products and services over m-commerce channels throughout 2015.

That represents an increase of 32 percent when compared to the same time in 2014.

Throughout 2015, m-commerce shopping made up an estimated 22 percent of all online retail shopping, according to the eMarketer figures for the United States. That represents a rise of 3 percentage points over the same figure from 2014. While that does appear to be a strong figure, it also shows that mobile shopping is being used more broadly in other parts of the world. For example, in South Korea, 46 percent of all online retail sales were conducted over smartphones or tablets. That represented 5.1 percent of the whole retail sales total for 2015.

Similar m-commerce figures were seen in other parts of the world, showing that the U.S. is lagging behind.

In China, for example, 50 percent of all online shopping sales and nearly 8 percent of retail purchases occurred over smartphones and tablets throughout 2015, according to the estimates from eMarketer.

Comparatively, in the U.S., consumers continue to use their mobile devices primarily for informing themselves about products as opposed to actually making a purchase. In the United States, under 2 percent of total retail sales are conducted by smartphone or tablet. Moreover, even though there have been some major mobile payments players that have entered that market – such as Apple and Google – only 14 percent of Americans said they would be interested in purchasing something over their mobile devices during the holiday season, said statistics from Bankrate.

Even specifically among Millennials, the demographic most likely to use their smartphones for activities such as shopping, only 20 percent said they had intended to use m-commerce for holiday purchases either online or through wallet apps that would be used in a retail brick and mortar location. It remains clear that the United States is a market facing considerable barriers to mobile shopping.

This trend is heading around the world as Diwali shopping in India broke mobile records.

While the holiday shopping season is only just getting started in the United States, India has already had a major wave of its own m-commerce season as Diwali brought a tremendous number of shoppers to their device screens to pick up that perfect gift.

According to UCWeb, the holiday shopping traffic across India broke the 75.5 percent mark this year.

UCWeb is the company behind the top mobile browser used in India, as it holds onto a market share that is greater than 54 percent in that country. This makes that company uniquely able to understand the increases that are being seen in m-commerce activities throughout the year and at times of holiday shopping such as during Diwali.

According to the company’s managing director in India, Kenny Ye, “The numbers of users who visit Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal via UC Browser in the month leading up to Diwali 2015 increased over 75 percent compared with last year.”

People in India are steadily increasing their use of m-commerce, particularly during festive seasons.

Ye went on to explain that consumers in India are “embracing shopping on the go” to a growing degree. They are finding that there is a great deal of opportunity available to take advantage of the time they have while they commute or on lunch breaks, for example, in order to pick up the gifts they need for festive celebrations. It helps them to save time and to be able to find some great ways to save money on what they want to buy.

That said, this use of mobile commerce for Diwali in India has been met with some resistance in that many people are saying that it is pushing people to think of this important time on the calendar in an exclusively commercial sense, when it is supposed to mean a great deal more.

This closely mirrors the sentiment of many people who will be using m-commerce to help them to get ahead in their Christmas shopping during the holiday season in the United States. It will be interesting to see what other trends follow the same paths between the two countries and their top gift giving holidays.