A chart based on US Census Bureau and Comscore data was published by Business Insider. It shows Mobile Commerce growing three times faster than Ecommerce overall.
Is Mobile Commerce taking on “classic” Ecommerce? Source.
The numbers behind it are very interesting:
- mobile commerce is on the rise and has registered a 48% YoY growth, in the second quarter. It now accounts for $8 billion in online spending.
- overall ecommerce (including mobile commerce) grew “only” 15.9% year over year in the second quarter and totals $70.1 billion in online sales.
However…
Stop betting on (just) mobile. We’re not there yet.
Smartphones and tablets have brought forth a revolution in computing and social interaction. Unfortunately for overenthusiastic mobile-only fans, mcommerce usage is lagging behind mobile device adoption.
If you look at the chart above you’ll see there’s a linear growth in mobile commerce. Not a hockey puck growth. Not even an accelerated growth.
Even more – ecommerce accounts for only 5.9% of all retail. Mobile commerce itself is just 11.4% of ecommerce. This means mobile commerce, however ambitious is pretty much insignifiant. It accounts for just 0.67% of total US retail.
Smartphones and tablets are extremely popular. Mobile commerce – not so much.
And hey – it’s not the fact that people don’t like smartphones. Oh no. People love smartphones:
Growth in smartphone penetration in the US. Source.
They also love tablets. Almost 42% of all US adults own at least a tablet. Remember – this is a product that went on sale only 4 years ago, when Apple introduced the iPad. In just 4 short years, the tablet has become a virtually ubiquitous computing item for US adults.
Tablet penetration among US adults. Source.
So – people are buying mobile devices like crazy. PC sales are dropping yet the mobile commerce is just 0.67% .Why?
The short answer – there is no mobile commerce.
Mobile is the bridge. It helps connect the physical world to the virtual world. The act of purchasing happens on multiple channels. Mobile is not “the future”. It is the present yet the present comes in a form we have not met before – a bridge across channels.
If we take the time to see matters from the consumer’s point of view things are not as black and white as we expect them to be. Few if any consumers think in terms of mobile OR desktop OR brick and mortar. The consumer will spend time in a B&M store, browse the web to search for the right products, do a little showrooming to find the be best pricing. In the end, the whole purchasing experience stretches across channels and some are more popular than others.
But the customer has only one perspective where channels blend in. The omnichannel perspective. To provide the ecosystem for this perspective, the new retailers will try to understand and implement omnichannel retail because mobile, however massive, is just a piece of the puzzle.
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