Smartphone based shopping saw an growth of an astounding 800 percent last year, and it is still rising.
According to data that has been released by Flipkart, an online retailer, it is expecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in mobile commerce of another 150 percent that will occur until 2016.
Smartphones are tremendously commonplace and are vital to the growth of the m-commerce sector in India.
At the moment, e-commerce in India is estimated to be worth about $4 billion. However, as cheaper handsets have become widely available, it has made it much easier for people throughout the country to be able to hunt for products, compare prices, and buy the items that they want in mobile commerce stores. Flipkart has reported that its own visits via smartphone has spiked by 200 percent in a single year. eBay India has been receiving about 35 percent of its overall traffic from these mobile devices.
Many other companies are reporting that mobile commerce is becoming a critical part of their online sales.
Snapdeal, a Delhi based company, has said that the revenue that it has been bringing in from shoppers using their smartphones has increased to 60 percent of the total. When compared to early 2013, when that figure was only 5 percent, it is clear that this is a vitally important market in the country.
A study conducted by PwC-Assocham has indicated that the e-commerce market in India will reach $20 billion by the year 2020. As a growing number of people are doing their online shopping by way of their mobile devices, it is becoming extremely clear that retailers are going to need to pay attention to their smartphone optimization if they are going to be able to keep up with the competition and appeal to shoppers that are using their favorite gadgets.
According to Bikky Khosla, CEO of TradeIndia (a B2B marketplace), and the chairman of the Assocham National Council on e-Commerce, “With the availability of low-cost smartphones, the e-commerce opportunity will increase manifold.” Therefore, businesses selling goods online will need to remember that mobile commerce is just as important as online selling as a whole.
