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Industry Trends

Major Growth Reported In Mobile Commerce

By January 18, 2010July 30th, 20233 Comments

Not only has mobile Internet usage continued to grow steadily through the recession, but mobile shopping has also seen major gains in recent times. eBay, in particular, saw a big jump in mobile shopping during the holiday season.

eBay reports that the amount of shopping done through mobile handsets saw significant growth during the last holiday season.

Considering the importance of e-commerce in everyday life, it was only a matter of time before mobile shopping, or m-commerce as it is being called, followed suit.

According to the report from eBay, about 6 million people across 165 countries, have installed an eBay application on their mobile phones, and eBay receives 750,000 unique mobile visits daily.

1.5 million purchases were made via m-commerce on eBay during the 2009 Christmas holiday season, which is almost 3 times the level seen during the same period in 2008.

The total revenue generated via eBay mobile applications in 2009 was reported to be worth half a billion U.S. dollars, and a new transaction took place every 2 seconds. This alone should be enough information to make a number of companies rethink their mobile strategy

Consumers are not just using mobile phones to make small purchases of items of daily use. Some very high-ticket luxury purchases were also made via mobile. Examples cited by eBay include a 23-foot deck boat, a Boston grand piano and a 1966 Chevrolet Corvette.

In a separate report, mobile phone manufacturer, Motorola, found that the usage and impact of mobile shopping technologies exploded during the 2009 holiday shopping season. The survey identified that 64 percent of Gen Y (age 18 to 34) shoppers used their mobile phones for in-store shopping-related activities during the holiday season.

With the ever-increasing amount of news pointing to the growth of mobile in just the first 2 weeks of the year, one wonders if 2010 might finally be the real year of mobile?