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Report says mobile retail purchases will exceed $700B annually by 2018

January 7, 2014

A new report from Juniper Research says that annual retail payments on mobile handsets and tablets are expected to reach $707 billion by 2018, representing 30 percent of all e-commerce retail by that time. This compares with mobile retail spending of $182 billion last year, when mobile accounted for around 15 percent of e-commerce spending.

The report, ″Mobile Payment for Digital & Physical Goods: Opportunities & Forecast 2014-2018,″ found that leading retailers are increasingly developing strategies built around mobile, using it as a hub to facilitate payment, product discovery and customer retention. As a result, it found that the size and scale of purchases across both smartphones and tablets was increasing strongly. However, for users owning both devices there was a strong trend toward browsing on the mobile phone while completing the purchase on the tablet, and that by the end of 2013 global monthly retail spend on tablets had eclipsed that on handsets.

The report also highlighted the increasing trend toward showrooming, where consumers examine retailer products in-store while simultaneously browsing on their mobiles to compare prices online. It argues that retailers need to adapt their strategies to incorporate this activity, by deploying tablets equipped with mobile point of sale capability throughout the store, while also introducing a price match option. According to report author Dr. Windsor Holden, ″This means that not only is the retailer proactively offering the consumer the opportunity to price check in-store, but that the purchase can be made immediately, without having to queue elsewhere in the store.″

However, the report cautioned that while retailers were increasingly optimizing their sites for mobile handsets, only a small minority had done so for tablets.

Other findings from the report include:

• Cyber Monday in 2013 saw retail sales via mobiles and tablets approach $400 million in the U.S. alone.
• For digital goods purchases, storefronts that implement direct carrier billing solutions can monetize younger demographics and unbanked users for the first time.

Read more about multichannel retailing.