Mobile commerce isn’t the up and coming thing to be on the look at for and it certainly isn’t an opportunity for savvy business people any more. Mobile commerce has become a full fledged reality and in 2013 if you are not competing in this market space you are running a serious risk to being left behind.
Just this week, Intela, a key player in database marketing services, released a new report offering great insight into the growth of mobile commerce with the mobile web and mobile applications. It turns out that as of right now almost half of all Americans (44%) and 40% of UK consumers are likely to make purchases via mobile device.
Another key finding included in their report highlight the fact that email that has been optimized for mobile devices is key trigger for smart brands to cue smartphone owners to make purchases via the mobile applications or mobile web sites on their mobile phones. In fact approximately one third (36%) of Americans are finding this very effective.
Along with the growth of mobile commerce, we are seeing changing patterns in how consumers are paying for goods. Younger consumers seem prone to using NFC payment systems within focus groups of shoppers under the age of 40 (according to Mercator Advisory Group) and mobile payment options are resonating with this demographic very strongly.
Business mobile applications can no longer stand on the sidelines and be simply informative. Mobile consumers are ready to buy via their mobile devices and mobile applications should be designed to accommodate this trend. Additionally, mobile applications need to be developed to utilize mobile payment options and be attune to usage patterns with regards to their demographic.
While global PC shipments sounds like they grew a solid 12% year-on-year for 2012 now that Q4 numbers are rolling in, you have to include tablets to arrive at that number. In fact one in every six PCs shipped during Q4 was an iPad. During the Q4 of 2012, Apple secured a 20% share of global PC shipments for the quarter, thanks mostly to strong iPad sales. Q4 numbers without tablets paint a much different picture – worldwide PC shipments without tablets were only 89.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, down 6.4% from the same quarter in 2011.
Principal analyst at Gartner, Mikako Kitagawa, states that tablets have changed the device landscape by becoming an alternative to a PC rather than a complement. And it is in this light where the opportunity for tablet application development comes in. Rather than thinking of tablets as big smartphones, approaching the device as an alternate to a laptop opens several new opportunities for application development.
If you break Apple’s numbers down you can see the impact tablets are having on the market, of the 27 million units Apple shipped, 22.9 million were iPads and 4.1 million were Macs.
Key to developing a strategy to leverage the massive growth of the tablet market is understanding the differences between tablets and other devices. Don’t just plan on your tablet app being a big smart phone app. Take advantage of additional navigational features and the extra screen size. Generally tablet apps preform poorly when that are just enlarged versions of smartphone apps and not optimized for the format. Likewise tablets have much different operating systems than desktops and laptops and its important to take advantage of those differences with your app.
If you look at the fact that tablets are replacing PCs or laptops in many situations and look at the software needs in those situations there are great opportunities for tablet app development to be had. This is different than the approach we have seen from many in the past where they simply try to build bigger versions of iPhone or Android Apps. How can you streamline desktop software into a high-performing iPad app? or Android tablet app? There are many opportunities in this area that savvy businesspeople can take advantage of right now.
Shoppers spent well over $30 billion online over this past holiday season and a large percentage of that was done via mobile devices. Often consumers will finalize online purchases via their desktop or laptop computer, but a rapidly expanding number are using mobile applications or mobile web sites while in-store and those shoppers are driving the future of mobile application commerce.
New surveys from GfKRoper and SapientNitro state that a whopping 80% of smartphone owners used their mobile devices while shopping during the 2012 holiday season. This is very solid growth for mobile shopping when compared to the past.
Other findings from these surveys include: 80% of mobile users accessed mobile applications or websites to research or browse products (15% higher than last year), 74% of mobile users completed at least one purchase via mobile device over the holidays (19% higher than the previous year) and 56% of mobile users looked to customer reviews and ratings to make a purchase decisions (16% higher than last year).
Motorola’s research suggests that younger shoppers are the most likely to use mobile devices for shopping and that only about a third of older consumers use mobile devices to shop. Their survey data indicates some of the reason behind the growth of mobile applications usage for commerce, suggesting that users often feel that they have a better chance of finding reliable information via mobile app or mobile web site than via retail employees.
Recently comScore release survey data that smartphones are now used by 55% of mobile users in Europe and by 52% of people in the United States. This works out to be over 121 million users and about half of those people reported using mobile browsers or downloading apps for a formidable market that is growing on a daily basis.