Tag: tablet commerce

Apple has now released its latest gadgets, which have been met with the mixed responses.

After having built up the traditional hype over the latest Apple event, the latest tablet commerce releases from the company have drawn a great deal of attention as well as many furrowed brows.

The iPad Air – the top of the line model – will begin shipping in select countries as of November 1.

Tim Cook took the stage at this mobile and tablet commerce event to release the latest technology news from the company, which primarily involved the unveiling of the iPad Air and the iPad Mini 2, but also involved several other announcements from the company. For instance, he reiterated the latest sales data for the opening weekend of the iPhones 5S and 5C, last month and pointed out that in September there had been 200 million downloads of the latest iOS 7 release.

It was by far the tablet commerce announcements that were most sought by the investors in attendance.

Nearly an hour into the event, tablet commerce and the newest iPad releases finally made their way to the topic. According to Cook, the 170 millionth iPad was sold earlier in October and “this is an incredible number and I can’t think of another product that’s come so far, so fast. Now everyone seems to be making a tablet, even some of the doubters.” He also expressed that the device line leads the market in customer satisfaction saying that “iPad combines into an incredible experience hardware and amazing software and intuitive services into an experience no one else can match.”

Just over an hour into the presentation, at 11:03am, a video if the iPads are shown and Phil Schiller, the vice president of worldwide marketing for Apple, unveiled the iPad Air. It features a 9.7 inch Retina display and is 43 percent thinner than the previous model. It weighs 0.4 pounds less than the previous iPad, as well, at only 1 pound, making it “the lightest full-size tablet in the world”, while being powered by the same A7 chip that can be found in the iPhone 5S and a 10 hour battery life.

The tablet commerce discussions continued with the unveiling of the iPad Mini 2 at about 11:15, local time. As was predicted by many, it is now a 7.9 inch Retina display, also powered by the A7 chip and featuring 10 hours of battery life. By the end of the event, investors seemed nonplussed overall and stocks had dropped by 1.41 percent ($7.36 to $514.00). Now only time will tell what consumers think.

Confidence is growing among mobile shoppers and the gap between the use of the devices is closing.

One of the primary struggles that have been faced so far in the mobile shopping world is in consumer confidence, and tablet commerce has always had far greater results in this area than the smartphone channel.

Even veteran online shoppers often struggle with their confidence and comfort on the smaller screen.

For several years, tablet commerce has seen considerably greater conversions than those experienced over smartphones, as consumers using those devices are more receptive to shopping than they are on the much smaller screens. This has been especially true over the iPad, specifically, although all of the larger screened mobile devices do perform better than smartphones when it comes to shopping, overall.

It has never been determined specifically why tablet commerce has done so much better than smartphone shopping.

Smartphone conversions have traditionally lagged far behind those over tablet commerce. However, the most recent statistics are starting to show that the gap between the conversion over these two channels is starting to shrink. Though the latest Adyer platform data showed that mobile purchases grew to 52.6 percent in the May to August quarter when compared to the 46.8 percent over the quarter before.

Ayder has speculated that this could be a summer trend, but it is causing many to watch the smartphone and tablet commerce figures over the next quarter to see if they continue in the same direction.

It has been guessed that the numbers may be moving that way as people become more dependent on their smartphones than their tablets. However, it could also mean that the supremacy of tablet commerce is coming to an end and smartphone users are becoming as comfortable shopping over their devices as their larger screen cousins.

At the same time, in Asia and South America, where 10.8 percent of online transactions are from smartphones and 5.8 percent are from tablet commerce, those larger screen devices are becoming more popular in those markets. The sheer scale of those markets could shift things back to tablets yet again, though the penetration of smartphones does remain well in the lead and if consumers have become comfortable with those devices, it will help to define that sector.