Last month, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that smartphones generated many sales.
The U.S. Census Bureau has just released a study that showed that while mobile commerce and online shopping did experience a slowing at the start of the year, it also saw a considerable increase on a monthly and quarterly level in April.
The total food services and retail sales for the first quarter this year increased by 3.7 percent over 2012.
At the same time, the month of April showed sales of $419 billion, which displays a month over month rise of 0.1 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau adjusted the estimates that it made based on holiday and trading day differences, as well as seasonal variations. It took in a random sampling of approximately 5,000 retail and food service companies in order to gather its mobile commerce and overall sales data.
The report indicated that the overall and mobile commerce price changes were not taken into consideration for April.
Overall, before the report had been released, economists had predicted that there would be a 0.3 percent decline in spending in retail which would be recorded by the Census Bureau. This was forecasted, in part, because of the increases in gas prices and the lead in to the driving season during the summertime. However, instead, it showed that other than in automotive and gas spending, there was a 0.1 percent increase over march, and a 0.6 percent increase in spending in mobile commerce.
From March to April of this year, there was a 0.1 percent rise over the previous report. However, while this did appear to be a gain, the March revised figures negated the positive figures. Total retail sales in March were altered from the original decline of -0.4 percent to a drop of -0.5 percent.
Mobile commerce and online shopping played a very important role in the increases that were seen, such as the overall increase in spending of 3 percent, over April of last year. In fact, when mobile commerce and e-commerce specifically were compared to the year before, they rose by a rather massive 15.4 percent.
