M-commerce market share on the rise

Thursday, August 22, 2013 - 15:40 by Paul Tissington

The number of people who are carrying out safe shopping online from smartphones will continue to grow over the coming years, with analysts expecting m-commerce sales to account for 25 per cent of the total e-commerce market by 2017.

This is according to a report from Medio, which also points out that retailers are actually having a harder time working out how to best serve customers who are buying products from a mobile device.

Experts predict that by the end of 2013, about 17.4 per cent of all revenue generated by online shopping will come from m-commerce purchases and this area of the market continues to see strong growth.

This might mean that even the 25 per cent stake predicted for 2017 will be conservative, with the final figures exceeding this amount.

There seem to be no signs that the adoption of smartphones and tablets is slowing down and in fact the continued decline in the sales of traditional PCs and laptops might mean that these portable devices are actually more common.

Customers who buy products using a mobile may be tougher to pin down and convince to go through with a transaction, but all of this interaction with retailers has a cumulative effect, with the companies that actually offer decent m-commerce services more likely to succeed than those that are less attuned to this market.

With more services controlled from smartphones, consumers will be looking to boost the security of shopping online from these devices.

This could be addressed by the rumours that both Apple and now HTC are working on flagship handsets that will come with built-in fingerprint scanners.

The iPhone 5S is set to launch next month and all signs point to the inclusion of this type of technology, which would make it harder for malicious third parties to unlock and use the device.