M-commerce dominated by Apple devices

Monday, January 2, 2012 - 08:05 by Graham Miller

The popularity of the iPhone and the iPad is allowing Apple to rule the roost when it comes to safe shopping online from portable gadgets, according to a new report.

RichRelevance has conducted a study which found that 92 per cent of people who bought an item from an e-commerce site in the past month were using a device running the iOS platform, which powers all of Apple's most up to date mobile phones, media players and tablets.

In April of 2011, it was revealed that Apple's dominance of the m-commerce market was at 88 per cent but it is clear that it has had even more success towards the end of the year, given the increase in iOS browsing that has been detected.

RichRelevance spokesperson, David Selinger, said that m-commerce accounted for about five per cent of safe shopping online, but with increasing traffic generated by portable devices and conversions rates improving all the time, he believes that it can only become more important over the ensuing months and years.

Despite Apple's current dominance of the m-commerce market, it is thought by many experts that it will soon be fighting to hold onto such a significant proportion, due to stiff competition from rival device manufacturers.

The Amazon Kindle Fire is set to arrive in the UK next month and it has already broken sales records in the US because it is one of the most affordable, powerful tablet computers on the market.

This evolution should allow a larger number of consumers to experience m-commerce without having to pay a premium price for an Apple product and, as such, the number of iOS devices used to make online purchases could drop relative to the total number of consumers who actually have browsing capabilities on their gadgets.