This year, retail mobile apps should generate sales growth by about 23 percent.
The results of a new Netsuite study have been released in their latest report, and have shown that mcommerce apps among high street retailers in the United Kingdom will increase from 70 percent to 80 percent.
This includes those that have stated that they intend to have at least one within the next year.
The leading platforms for retail mcommerce applications are iOS (at 48 percent), Android (at 45 percent), Windows Phone (at 30 percent) and Blackberry (at 23 percent). According to a Center for Business and Economic Research economist, Colin Edwards, “In the context of a difficult macroeconomic climate, retailers seem positive in their expectations for revenue growth.”
The mcommerce results may not be quite as strong as retailers think, but that they should still be promising.
He also added that the retailer estimates may eventually prove to have been on the optimistic side, but that “the relative importance of the higher expected growth rates among retailers with e-commerce and m-commerce revenue streams means that these revenue channels are likely to become increasingly important.
Despite the fact that most of the retailers have already been maintaining their own mcommmerce sites or smartphone applications, there are still quite a number who are struggling to develop a mobile platform.
The primary hurdles that these retailers are facing in the delivery of apps is their multi channel integration (in 38 percent of cases), the lack of the necessary budget (in 37 percent of cases), and that the retailers are still trying to establish the necessary understanding for creating a practical and appropriate mobile experience (in 15 percent of cases).
According to the NetSuite general manager of commerce products, Andy Lloyd, not many people had predicted that mobile commerce would race ahead so quickly from being a pleasant additional convenience to a vital part of a company’s online sales platform. He added that the majority of retailers are currently scrambling to get things under control in order to add a mobile channel that they will be able to offer to consumers before the competition gets ahead.
