Initial figure said that sales made online were up by an estimated 21.5 percent over last year’s numbers.
The first wave of data from Black Friday is now making its way over and what it has indicated was that mobile shopping took off on that day and was used considerably more than it was on the same day in 2014.
IBM has released its figures from the m-commerce use this year and showed that apps are paying off.
The tech company’s figures showed that when compared to last year, there was an increase of 21.5 percent in digital sales through mobile shopping. This indicates that retailers that invested in improvements in their mobile commerce apps and optimized websites saw the fruits of their efforts. While IBM has revealed the growth rates, it does not report on the total sales figures that occurred on this opening day of the holiday shopping season. That said, on the evening of Black Friday, Adobe reported that Americans were on track to spend over $2.7 billion in online purchases.
If Adobe was correct, it would mean that there would actually have been a 14 percent mobile shopping increase.
That growth in m-commerce would have been over Adobe’s own tracking methods compared to the figures that it gathered on the same day last year. That said, both IBM and Adobe agreed that mobile shoppers were using their smartphones and tablets to make purchases more often than on their laptops and desktops. This represents the first time this has ever happened on Black Friday.
According to Tamara Gaffney, an Adobe analyst, “US consumers have turned into digital shopping ninjas.” Adobe has also estimated that the total spending from American consumers online over Thursday and Friday of last week came to a record total of $4.45 billion. It stated that it would be updating its reports to include in-store sales as well.
Adobe’s report indicated that online and mobile shopping consumers were looking primarily for gadgets and the hottest toy products. Among the most popular Black Friday buys were the iPad Air 2, Xbox, Samsung TVs, Star Wars Lego, Lego Dimension sets, and Shopkin Dolls.
The Canadian manufacturers of the “world’s lowest cost” version of the device is aiming for ultra-cheap.
Datawind, a Canadian mobile manufacturer that has already been making tablet commerce news headlines through its creation of the lowest cost device in this category, the UbiSlate 7Ci which retails for $37.99 still isn’t cheap enough for the company which is now looking to reduce the cost of the ownership of these gadgets.
The company is hoping to be able to slash 50 percent from the price tag for its products.
The hope is that this low price will open up tablet commerce to pretty much anybody. According to the CEO of Datawind, Suneet Singh Tuli, “This idea is to bridge the digital divide, it’s really that simple, the idea is to overcome the affordability barrier.” The company currently boasts five different locations, including Toronto Canada, as well as England, India, and Germany.
They feel that tablet commerce can be affordable for everyone and that everybody has a right to it.
Singh Tali explained that “We think as the Scandinavians do that (Internet access) is a fundamental human right.” The team from the company is now working on implementing a new strategy that will help to slash the price for tablets that will be considered “good enough” for many consumers, especially considering they will only be paying around $20 for them.
Datawind is best recognized for the work that it has done with the Indian government. It has previously supplied them with inexpensive tablets for a program that is designed to ensure that students will have access to these mobile devices.
Recently, MIT Technology Review magazine called Datawind one of the 50 smartest companies in the world. That was following the launch of its cheap tablet computers under the Aakash brand with the Indian government.
At the same time that the government of India is now considering the proposals of a number of companies, including Datawind, for the next generation of Aakash, the business has now set its sights on tablet commerce in North America as well as the United Kingdom. It is hoping to place a better focus on selling UbiSlate branded devices directly to the consumer.
