US holiday e-commerce projected to rise 15% this year

December 4, 2013

Retail consultancy eMarketer has released its forecasts for this holiday season for both the U.S. and the U.K.

U.S. retail:

EMarketer projects that retail e-commerce holiday sales in the U.S. will rise about 15 percent again this year, matching last year's gains. In total, U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the holiday season — defined as November and December — are expected to reach $61.8 billion, up from $53.7 billion last year.
EMarketer estimates U.S. retail e-commerce sales will grow 16.4 percent to $262.3 billion this year, with 23.5 percent ($61.8 billion) of this taking place in November and December.
M-commerce is expected to play an important part in overall digital holiday retail spending. eMarketer expects that mobile's share will reach 16 percent in 2013, up from our previous prediction of a 15 percent m-commerce share this year.
EMarketer predicts retail m-commerce sales will reach $41.68 billion this year and by 2017, retail sales made on mobile devices will climb to well over $100 billion.
This year, eMarketer predicts, tablet retail m-commerce sales will hit $26.05 billion, or 62.5 percent of U.S. retail m-commerce sales overall. That's up from last year when tablets took a 56.2 percent share of m-commerce retail sales.

U.K. Retail:

EMarketer predicts robust growth of 18.0 percent in overall U.K. retail e-commerce sales this year, to £45.40 billion ($72.06 billion), and this growth will continue at double-digit rates for several years to come.
U.K. m-commerce is expected to more than double this year to £8.17 billion ($12.97 billion), accounting for 18 percent of total U.K. retail e-commerce sales, according to new figures from eMarketer.
Tablet commerce in the U.K. will triple this year to reach £4.74 billion ($7.52 billion) and take 10.4 percent of total U.K. retail e-commerce sales, according to eMarketer's latest forecasts. By 2017, that figure will reach nearly £18 billion ($28.57 billion), to account for over a quarter of all U.K. retail e-commerce sales.