Consumer confidence is increasing
Mobile transactions will account for more than a quarter of all online purchases made in the UK by 2017, up from 15% this year, as consumers become increasingly confident buying goods on smartphones and tablets. E-commerce on the whole is set to continue growing strongly in the UK, with online purchases accounting for 11% of the UK’s GBP383bn (USD600bn) retail market this year, a rise from last year’s 10.2%. The figures come from eMarketer’s first ever UK-focused report and show that smartphone and tablet uptake is this year expected to drive GBP6.6bn (USD10.49bn) in sales, reaching GBP17.24bn (USD27.36bn) by 2017.
Tablets Increasingly Important
The report says that purchases made through tablet devices are treble-digit growth for the third consecutive year this year, generating GBP3.57bn (USD5.67bn) in sales. By contrast smartphones, which are expected to be used by 23.4m consumers this year, will see a drop to 42.6% of mobile commerce, illustrating that tablets are quickly becoming the primary device for mobile commerce. This is reflected in the US, where tablets are set to account for nearly two-thirds of the projected USD37.4bn mobile commerce spend this year.
Smartphones’ Browsing Role
Mobile commerce spend in the US topped USD5.9bn during Q1, equating to a little more than 10% of overall USD50bn e-commerce spend during the quarter. However, smartphones remainthe primary devices used for browsing in the US, accounting for more than a third of time spent on e-commerce sites, while tablets made up 14%. Increasing smartphone penetration in emerging markets means that mobile traffic is also expected to become an important factor for e-commerce sites wanting to cash in on rapidly-growing economies.
Whitepapers
Related reading
Central banks best suited to issue digital currencies
By Aaran Fronda A recent report by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) said that central banks rather than private ... read more
Instant payments: innovations inbound for corporates
In 2020, instant payments look set to continue their current trajectory to become the biggest trend in payments. While these schemes already offer numerous benefits to corporates, leveraging innovations such as APIs and request to pay will go some way to unlocking their full potential, argues Michael Knetsch
Obstacles exist for banks to meet ECB’s instant payments goal
The cost of joining instant payment platforms will be one of many hurdles banks and payment services providers must overcome to meet ... read more
Banks must be aware of “biases” in data used to train ML models
Financial institutions need to be conscious of biases in the historical data that is being used to train machine learning (ML) models, ... read more
