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It has been widely estimated that the growth of the mobile payment market will continue to increase as it has over the last few years, but figures recently published from Juniper Research show just how swiftly the industry will be expanding over the next five years.
Juniper’s figures show that the annual transaction value of online, mobile and contact-less payments will reach $4.7 trillion by 2019, up from just over $2.5 trillion for 2014. The rise in tablet usage for purchasing goods online is a factor in Juniper’s figures. In the U.S. market, purchases using tablets account for 25% of all physical goods transactions — a figure forecasted to rise to 63% in 2019. Certain global factors such as China’s growing participation in the mobile market are important elements, including online retailer Alibaba’s accounting for 20% of global business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer online retailing worldwide in 2013.
VISUAL CONTEXT: AMAZON SALES
Source: Internet Retailer
The research group explains:
From a physical goods perspective, the dramatic growth in purchases via tablets means that in some markets a significant proportion of all online purchases is conducted via these devices…There has been a marked migration of e-retail from desktop/laptop to tablet, as part of the ‘couch commerce’ revolution. When this is combined with the consumer ‘showrooming’ trend, whereby consumers browse retail prices in-store on their smartphones and then return home to fulfill the purchase on their tablets, the increased importance of the tablet in this regards becomes clear.
It looks as though this was just the right moment for Amazon to introduce its own smartphone — a device rumored for so long and only recently announced by the company. It has long been thought that Amazon’s smartphone would be the clincher for its dominance in online retail — a market it which it is the top player already. In late 2013, Internet Retailer published information pointing to Amazon’s ability to sell more online than its next 12 biggest competitors combined.
Those who have anticipated the Amazon smartphone have postulated that a smart device to complement its tablet offerings would enable Amazon to retrieve all kinds of location and shopping data about users that would improve upon its ability to tailor its retail presence to consumers. That plus the features of the Amazon phone that include 3D display for the user make it an ideal shopping-centric device.
If Juniper’s numbers are anything to go by, such a device is perfectly timed to get a jump start on the e-retail market set to double over five years.
