As with any new marketing-focused technology, the key question is always "what is the reach?"
A new release from beacon platform company inMarket shows that beacons seem to be reaching a critical mass of addressable consumers.
However, these same consumers have not yet become comfortable with storing their card data in mobile apps. Concern about security of the apps has greatly limited their uptake.
Now new research has shown that mobile has truly reached the "tipping point" for mobile commerce in the UK, with over 50% of traffic to retail sites coming from mobile devices.
And what's more, over 1/3 of all online purchases are now made over mobile as well!
It’s no secret that Facebook is a digital advertising behemoth. eMarketer predicts Facebook will serve over 21% of all mobile ads this year, which earns Facebook the number two spot in all digital ad sales, second only to Google.
That being said, Facebook “buy now” ads simply won’t work. Here’s why. Industry Opinion by David Rekuc, Ripen eCommerce
Now a new trend has been identified - "Web-rooming". This is the exact opposite of show-rooming, and in fact appears to be more popular.
This infographic explains the phenomenon, and suggests the best ways for retailers to take advantage of this situation.
Payment is often seen as a difficult step in commerce, so in recent years a lot of effort has been going into finding new and better ways to allow customers to pay.
Now PayPal and Starbucks are piloting a new payment scheme that may be the easiest ever, and it is based around the new Gear 2 smartwatch from Samsung.
One company that is doing just this is Monitise, a company that began in mobile banking, but now has grown to support mobile payments and mobile commerce. And soon, Monitise intends to turn banks in a "media channel".
Zample is a new start-up that is helping brands increase the relevance of their advertising by listening to - and automatically recognizing - the media which surrounds a consumer. This information can have great value for mobile app publishers, and may spawn some interesting new marketing services.
A recent study has shown that, compared with older generations, the buying habits of Millennials are significantly more influenced by their friends' social media activities.
A recent study by Yesmail interactive has shown that the percentage of consumers interacting with email exclusively on mobile devices is now over half (52%), and the growth rate of mobile generated orders is triple that for desktop PC's.
Retailers and brands using Pinterest saw a 224% increase in mobile revenue in January 2014 compared to a year earlier.
Here is our take on four of the most interesting trends that we spotted at the show, subjects that we believe could well be important for MobiAD subscribers to follow over the coming year, including Internet of Things, m-Payments, Mobile Marketing, and Mobile For Development.
MEF Africa is releasing a series of country specific market reports - the first of which highlights Kenya, home of the phenomenally successful m-Pesa payment system!
This new whitepaper from the GSMA is a detailed look at the opportunities provided by mobile commerce in the retail industry.
The research shows that mobile shopping is more transactional than PC shopping which is mainly used for research.
PayPal, one of the world's leading payments companies has recently announced Beacon, a new mobile retail product based on Bluetooth, which could lead to much smoother interaction in store.
During its quarterly earnings call, CEO Eric Lefkofsky said that Groupon was “uniquely positioned to lead in the world of mobile commerce."
Over the coming years, this issue will have an important impact on marketers and merchants everywhere.
This in-depth survey from ING International provides some surprising answers and a better understanding of this important emerging consumer trend.
Mobile commerce is a natural fit with flash-sales, as there is often a need to react quickly to sales.
Recently Vente-privee released figures which showed just how important the mobile channel is in various European countries.
The coffee giant is hoping to attract further use of the system over the coming months, with a number of promotions - most notably, a rewards system that’ll earn customers points for each transaction made via mobile.
The auction site gained roughly 2.8 million new mobile users in that period. And the company saying it expects to generate around $20 billion each from mobile commerce and mobile payments this year.
Recently venerable American Express partnered with social media powerhouse Twitter to let consumers purchase simply using #hashtags!
The e-commerce piece, subtitled - Portrait of a tablet shopper - provides a real eye-opener into tablet users' purchasing power. And if these statistics don't motivate retailers to optimize their sites for tablet use, then it seems there's little hope to save them.
With more and more consumers preferring to use mobile for online commerce, Cyber Monday also provides a good measure of the growth of m-commerce, and 2012 proved the importance of mobile.
This forecast follows on from their Quarterly Benchmarking study which showed that sales through mobile rose to 11.6% in the second quarter of 2012, up from 8.2% in Q1.
Launched over 4 years ago, the service allows users to manage electronic money via their mobile device and is now also launching in Jordan and Mauritius.
To investigate these and similar questions, dotJWT (the digital arm of the JWT) conducted an in-depth survey of several hundred mobile shoppers .
The results show that mobile is rapidly becoming a very significant commerce channel, but the actual mobile shopping behavior of today's consumers may not be what you think.
Two recent product launches in the UK of Barclaycard Pingit and O2's mobile wallet have raised public awareness even more.
Here we take a look at the functionality offered by these apps, and how well they actually perform in today's real world.
Each year, Chetan contacts a wide variety of leaders in the mobile industry to see what they feel will be the key trends in the upcoming year, as well as what they thought were the most interesting and important developments during the previous year.
It always makes for interesting reading!
An interesting infographic released by mobile banking solution provider Intuit provides an informative look at consumers' current payment behavior and preferences, and how these are evolving towards mobile payments.
But over the last few years, as consumers get more familiar with mobile technology, there has been an increase in mobile transactions on the Monday after Thanksgiving, thus giving way to the new term, Mobile Monday.
Here are some highlights on the growing trend of mobile commerce.
A new study from market research firm Juniper forecasts that the number of mobile consumers paying by phone for goods and services is set to grow very rapidly over the coming few years.
However, the increase will not be uniform across the world, with certain areas growing more rapidly but others seeing higher value payments.
SmartPay is intended to help mobile app developers and content providers to expand their business and monetize their users across multiple international markets.
The map provides a overview of how mobile commerce and mobile payments is growing as well as who are the key players, and is a good resource for anyone who is interested in this part of the mobile industry.