This willingness for smartphone users to embrace the technology will generate a growth of 50 percent.
According to Juniper Research, consumers are embracing mobile commerce at a much faster rate than they accepted the standard web for purchasing products back in the 1990s.
It has been suggested that it is supply and not demand that is holding the marketplace back.
The research firm has indicated that the number of people who are buying physical goods through m-commerce channels will increase from this year’s 393 million to a tremendous 580 million by the close of 2014. This represents a growth of nearly 50 percent, and it will be largely driven by consumer confidence in their mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Many are suggesting that this will make mcommerce the primary channel for tomorrow’s shopper.
According to the author of the report, Windsor Holden, mobile devices are seen as both reliable and convenient, explaining that mcommerce “is not only another channel…but also the channel of the future.”
The channel has already been seeing a very large amount of revenue, as there has already been a worldwide transaction value of $254 billion so far this year. However, as high as this number is – and without even having started the holiday shopping season yet – Juniper Research has gone on to predict that the mobile transactions regarding the purchase of physical products will break the $730 billion mark in only 5 years.
The projection suggests that the average annual growth rate will be 23 percent. At the moment, 70 percent of mobile commerce transactions are occurring in the Chinese, Far Eastern, and North American markets. However, the Juniper Research report has indicated that there will be a steep rate of growth throughout the forecast period, which extends to the end of 2017, regardless of the maturity of various markets. While they believe that the Chinese market will experience an annual growth rate of 15 percent, the Indian subcontinent’s annual growth will be a whopping 50 percent.
According to Holden, it will be up to the suppliers to improve the success of mobile commerce, and not the demand from consumers, as the latter is already the driving force behind the growth.
