{"id":542547,"date":"2010-04-24T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=115753"},"modified":"2010-04-24T11:00:02","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T15:00:02","slug":"listen-up-mobile-retail-isn%e2%80%99t-just-about-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/542547","title":{"rendered":"Listen Up: Mobile Retail Isn\u2019t Just About Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the mobile industry, hype usually outpaces true performance by a substantial margin. But mobile commerce -\u2013 the business of conducting transactions on mobile phones \u2013- is gaining real traction, much of it driven by the mobile web. So while downloadable smartphone applications are the hottest thing in mobile, retailers looking to hawk their stuff to on-the-go users need to make wireless websites their top priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cMobile commerce\u201d is an overly broad term; it includes everything from buying and downloading apps and content (a wildly successful space thanks to the emergence of the iPhone) to the concept of using a phone as a kind of credit card at the retail counter (a segment that has yet to grow legs despite plenty of investment<\/a>). But another segment is quietly generating money: selling physical goods to consumers over the mobile web. And it’s a potentially huge industry.<\/p>\n

eBay is gunning for a whopping $1.5 billion in mobile sales this year<\/a>, and Amazon’s mobile site traffic is second only to eBay among vendors of real-world stuff, according to figures from Nielsen. An annual survey from Deloitte last year that found that one in five consumers planned to use their mobile phones to shop<\/a> during the 2009 holiday season, 25 percent of whom said they intended to make purchases on their phones.<\/p>\n

Of course, many mobile purchases of real-world goods are being conducted through handset-specific apps that provide a highly optimized user experience. But building an iPhone application isn\u2019t a surefire path to success. Some offerings are plagued with performance problems or inadequate functionality, and many simply aren\u2019t much better than a mobile site. More importantly, mobile applications by definition can address only a small fraction of the potential market.<\/p>\n

The iPhone accounted for only 16.6 percent<\/a> of worldwide smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to ABI Research, and Strategy Analytics pegged the iPhone\u2019s share of the overall handset market at a mere 3 percent<\/a>. Meanwhile, it\u2019s difficult \u2013- if not impossible \u2013- to find a mobile phone on retail shelves that doesn\u2019t have at least a rudimentary browser.<\/p>\n

As I describe in my column at GigaOM Pro this week<\/a>, there are a few approaches online retailers can take to maximize mobile sales regardless of which device users have in hand:<\/p>\n