Juniper Research has published a new report that shows annual retail payments on mobile handsets and tablets are expected to reach $707 billion (£430 billion) worldwide by 2018. This means mobile retail spending will account for 30% of all online purchases in 2018, compared with the $182 billion (15% of e-retail) spent last year.
The report found that the size and scale of purchases via smartphones and tablets was increasing, thanks to retailers using mobile technology for payment, product discovery and customer retention.
However, it also noted that consumers with both tablets and smartphones tended to browse on the mobile phone and complete their purchase on the tablet. In fact, global monthly retail spend on tablets had overtaken spending via handsets by the end of last year. There was also a warning that increasing numbers of retailers were optimising their web sites for mobile handsets but only a small minority had done this for tablets.
Dr Windsor Holden, the report’s author, highlighted the trend towards in-store mobile browsing for similar products (‘showrooming’) and said retailers needed to adapt their strategies to incorporate this activity by price matching and deploying their own mobile Point of Sale devices throughout the store.
[Whitepaper; report]