Category: Tablet Commerce

A recent report showed that the French marketplace spiked to reach €1 billion last year.

According to Fevad, a French e-commerce association, the m-commerce market in the country increased to approximately €1 billion last year, which marks an increase of around 150 percent.

This was a considerable rise in the marketplace and was in line with growth seen in other European countries.

In 2011, the m-commerce market had been worth an estimated €400 million. In 2012, however, it increased to the point that it made up almost 2 percent of all sales that were made online. The data in the report did not include pay apps that were used on websites that were taking part in the Fevad’s iCM mobile commerce index.

Those m-commerce figures in the report were exclusively sales made on optimized websites and apps.

During the fourth quarter of last year, the sales in the m-commerce environment were a whopping 2.6 times higher than there were during the same period of time in 2011. Online sales overall in the French market space blasted upward to €45 billion in 2012. That represented a tremendous growth of 19 percent when compared to the year before. It was also an 8 percent cut of the nation’s total retail market sales.

In terms of online payments last year, there was a rise of 28 percent that was recorded in the report for the entire year, and the fourth quarter represented precisely that percentage. This demonstrated a steady growth in that sector of m-commerce, which is very promising for the marketplace, as it means that this is a steady increase and not one that will be seasonal around holiday shopping time.

The average size of m-commerce transactions increased by 24 percent throughout 2012, but it fell by 1 percent to reach €85 within the last quarter of the year. At the same time, during the first eleven months of the year, the number of online shoppers fell by 5 percent. However, while shoppers dwindled slightly, the number of shopping websites in the country grew by 17 percent during that same time, to reach 117,500.

This would bring sales through the channel up to $31 billion within a 4 year period.

Forrester Research has released its latest mobile commerce data, which has shown that mobile commerce currently represents a small fraction of total sales for retail companies and for the next few years, it is likely that it will grow, but still remain a small percentage of the whole.

The sale of physical goods and services over smartphones was small but notable last year.

In the United States, these mobile commerce purchases were worth $8 billion and made up 3 percent of total online sales and under 1 percent of the overall retail sales total. Forrester estimates that this numbers were driven higher by some of the top performers in this channel, such as eBay and Amazon, which have experienced billions of dollars in sales from wireless devices.

For the majority of American retailers, mobile commerce sales represent a lower portion of the whole.

Over the next four years, the total mobile commerce sales are expected to increase by 33 percent per year – said the Forrester Research data – until they reach $31 billion. This means that by 2017, they will make up 9 percent of online sales.

According to that same research company, at the time of their study, there were 132 million people in the United States that had a smartphone with an internet connection. However, only one in every four actually made a mobile commerce purchase. They speculated that the reason that this rate has remained as low as it has is because of the retailers themselves.

Forrester has identified retailers as the cause of their own mobile commerce struggle, saying that it can be too challenging for consumers to check out and pay for items on their smartphones to make it feel worth their while. They also pointed out that some retailers are too wrapped up in apps of which consumers are completely unaware.

Aside from Forrester’s own speculations, it has also been suggested that the design of the smartphones, themselves, may be partly to blame. Although some screens have wonderful image zooming capabilities, it can still be quite challenging for device users to be able to closely examine products, especially within the apparel sector.