Over half of Asia Pacific consumers shop using their smartphones, but the level of popularity is regional.
Over half (51.6 percent) Asia Pacific shoppers use smartphones to buy products and services, according to a new APAC m-commerce study. That said, the same survey revealed that across 14 different markets, the degree of popularity of mobile commerce varies from one region to the next.
This insight was provided by the most recent MasterCard Mobile Shopping Survey results.
Once again this year, the survey pointed to India as being the leader in the APAC m-commerce marketplace. That country had the highest percentage of consumers who use mobile shopping. There, 75.8 percent of consumers said they had used their smartphones to make at least one purchase during the three months prior to the study. China held second place, with 71.4 percent of consumers using mobile commerce.
Not too far behind was Thailand, where 64.9 percent of consumers shop over mobile. Similarly, 60.9 percent of people in South Korea, 58.5 percent of people in Indonesia and 56 percent of people in Vietnam use mobile commerce.
That said, the APAC m-commerce study showed consumers in developed nations don’t use it as much.
In Singapore, 46.4 percent of consumers used m-commerce within the three month prior to the study. Only 44.3 percent of people in Hong Kong, 30.8 percent of Japanese consumers, 26.1 percent of Australian shoppers and 26.0 percent of consumers from New Zealand used their smartphones to buy products and services.
Also surveyed were consumers in the Philippines, where 53.5 percent had used mobile commerce and in Malaysia, where 55.6 percent had done so. While neither of those two countries saw the largest proportion of smartphone shoppers, they were the nations with the largest growth rate for the trend. In Philippines, there was a 12.6 percent growth rate and Malaysia’s growth rate in m-commerce use was 10.1 percent.
The APAC m-commerce survey involved the participation of 8,700 adults. It showed that while more consumers are using mobile shopping everywhere, it’s in the emerging nations where the growth is the strongest. It also pointed to the importance of digital wallets in those regions, particularly in India and China.
