For any one in two minds about mobile retail, take a look at Amazon: during the past 12 months the company has generated $1billion from mobile purchases. The news comes just weeks after eBay revealed that it is looking to make $1.5billion through mobile in 2010.
Amazon has also revealed that its Kindle e-books store now sells more electronic books than the company sells real books. However, Amazon has not revealed how much of the $1billion in mobile sales come from Kindle. Growth has also been dramatic since the company added its one-click payment mechanic to its mobile offering at the end of 2008.
“We’re seeing rapid growth in Kindle, Amazon Web Services, third-party sales, and retail,” says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “We’re also encouraged by what we see in mobile. In the last twelve months, customers around the world have ordered more than $1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device.
“The leading mobile commerce device today is the smartphone, but we’re excited by the potential of the new category of wireless tablet computers,” he continues. “Over time, tablet computers could become a meaningful additional driver for our business.”
The fact that eBay and now Amazon are now reporting such stellar mobile sales provides an interesting counterpoint to M-Retailing’s own research, carried out with marketing agency Sponge over June, which found that 40% of retailers we questioned have no plans to use mobile in the next 24 months. Obviously, mobile appears to be an easy fit with ‘online’ businesses such as eBay and Amazon, but we hope that it also demonstrates that there is a growing public thirst for mobile commerce.
