According to a recent Business Insider Intelligence report, 29 percent of mobile users have used their smartphone to make a purchase. This includes anything from paying bills to run-of-the-mill online shopping. While those numbers may not appear staggering upon first glance, it’s the growth over the past couple of years coupled with the rise of tablet devices that should have marketers’ interests.
Looking at recent Cyber Monday sales, 6.6 percent of 2011 sales came from mobile devices, up from just 3.9 percent the year prior. That huge growth coincides with the popularity of tablet devices, which have quadrupled the amount of traffic coming from them to visit retail websites year over year. Additionally, tablet users currently drive more traffic to retail websites than smartphones and spend more money than shoppers on PCs.
It’s no secret that consumers are growing more and more reliant on their smartphones and tablets by the day. Shopping for items is a major part of that, especially when you consider the on-the-fly ability to research products before you buy them. Smartphones account for nearly half of all mobile phones in the U.S., over 100 million people, and that number continues to grow, creating a greater segment of the population to reach with a clever marketing campaign. If you also consider the ever-increasing mobile payment technology, services such as Square and Google Wallet, we could be seeing more and more mobile transactions in the near future.
In 2012, mobile commerce generated over $25 billion in revenue in the U.S. and Europe. That already impressive number is expected to more than double in the next three years. A recent study from Bank of America projects mobile commerce revenue to exceed $67 billion by 2015. It is not out of the realm of possibility to think that mobile commerce revenue can topple $100 billion in the U.S. and Europe well before the end of the decade.
If marketers want to establish themselves in the mobile sector, now would be a good time. Being one of the first companies to put together a clever mobile marketing campaign would be paramount to brand awareness, especially with the tech-savvy mobile commerce consumer.
[Source: Business Insider]
