As we’ve mentioned before, early adopters, especially in the technology world aren’t as forthcoming as one might think. It’s easy to speculate that anyone savvy in ecommerce must be at the forefront of the online retail industry, but alas even digital pioneers have their limitations. Like any other business people, ecommerce merchants who had nothing to lose, came into the realm of internet retail with guns-a-blazing, but once establishing themselves into a nice niche foxhole, it was time to lay back, risk averse, and wait the quarry out. When mobile commerce began bouncing around on the horizon, many ecommerce pioneers couldn’t tell whether it was friendly rabbit or cunning coyote, so the wait continued, and rationalizations proliferated: My customers won’t know what to do if they visit the store on mobile and it doesn’t look like home (never mind how difficult it is to navigate standard online stores from a mobile internet device). Mobile is just a trend, it won’t last. Mobile, what’s that–who cares.
Even today, there are still many ecommerce merchants who question the value of mobile commerce. eBay is obviously not one of them. This 2/27/2012 headline in the Mercury News, eBay expects revenue from mobile commerce to nearly double this year, tells us exactly where mobile commerce is going: up, up, up:
eBay (EBAY) forecast robust growth in its mobile commerce segment as the online commerce and auction site expects more people to shop and pay via smartphones. The San Jose company has been making a particularly strong push in mobile commerce and developing new applications for its e-commerce platforms. In 2012, eBay expects to do $8 billion in mobile commerce retail volume, and its electronic payments system PayPal expects to process $7 billion in mobile payment volume.
According to this article in today’s Computer World online news, Facebook is even re-gearing to make receiving mobile payments easier:
“Facebook is working with mobile operators to make phone-based payments easier and has launched an effort to standardise HTML5 to help developers write applications for more mobile handsets, its chief technology officer announced on Monday.”
While mobile commerce trends aren’t expected to dip anytime soon–especially with younger generations using mobile internet technology for everything from shopping to watching video (TV is quickly losing viewers to mobile/internet)–it’s important to note that it is rapidly evolving. We’ll be talking more about new trends in mobile as they develop. Until then, if you haven’t already, upgrade your Yahoo! Store to include a mobile friendly design, and stay tuned for more news.
