Significant m-commerce growth predicted

Friday, March 11, 2016 - 09:14 by Simon Crisp

Mobile devices will be used by 4.77 billion people globally to make payments and carry out transactions by the year 2019, according to a new Ovum report.

In 2016 that figure will be much lower, with around 690 million mobile users carrying out activities, including safe shopping online from their handsets. And so analysts are predicting massive growth to take place in this marketplace over the next three years.

As smartphones become more ubiquitous worldwide, more consumers have the opportunity to surf the web, buy products and conduct their financial affairs from a portable device rather than a desktop PC.

Analysts are also expecting a rapid increase in m-commerce because the technical capabilities of modern smartphones are making them easier to use for safe shopping online. Bigger screens and more powerful processors are giving them a better ability to compete with tablets as the go-to portable shopping platform of choice.

In 2019, a total of over 2 billion m-commerce transactions are expected to take place, representing a significant increase on the 452 million transactions of this type that took place back in 2014.

In total the value of m-commerce sales will surpass $690 billion (£495 billion) globally. But analysts also point out that there are other types of transactions for which mobiles will become increasingly responsible, outside of the retail market.

This includes person-to-person payments, with NFC technology making it easier for people to send eachother money without using cash or traditional transfer mechanisms.

Report spokesperson, Eden Zoller, said that smartphones were no longer simply devices which were used at the start of the shopping journey, but could instead take consumers from researching to purchasing a product, without any other platform being involved in the process. And it is this power that should help to fuel growth in the coming years.