According to an article I read this morning on the New Your Times, shopping online using cell phones or tablet computers (iPads, iPods) accounted for 5% of online sales in November 2010. Last year, the sales were, “too insignificant to measure”.
Readers of Jim Carlson dot Net may recall that I’ve been experimenting with the mobile blog publishing, photo editing and printing and currently am trying to decide if I can survive with a ‘dumb phone’ and an iPod Touch.
Mobile phones and tablets are changing the way we live and work. Although ‘smart phones’ continue to evolve (my articles were based on the painfully out of date Moto Q9C), I’m seeing more and more people using the iPod Touch as an inexpensive way to get the benefits of a ‘smart phone’ with out the added price of the ‘smart phone’ service.
The interesting thing about this evolution of internet shopping is that many users, my self included, don’t think twice when making a purchase using these devices. I’ve purchased items from a variety of stores, won Ebay auctions, made payments with PayPal, purchased movie tickets while in line at the theater and transfered balances using mobile banking.
One more note on the use of these devices. Like many people I talk to, I have used my smart phone or my iPod to make purchases even when I am in the vicinity of my home computer. I am spending more face time on the handheld devices than their cousins (laptops and…dare I say it….desktops).
The use of mobile is also changing retail. It is not uncommon to see people checking for better deals on their mobile while shopping in-store. Ironically, in the footer of the NYT article that inspired this post was a link to an article on how Best Buy Feels the Pressure of Rivals on the Web.
Mobile devices continue evolve. Best Buy is running commercials describing the latest smart phones as ‘laptops in your hand’. Not a bad description, unfortunately, this same company is dealing with people surfing for better deals on the very devices they sell.
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