Mobile phone and tablet users will make 195 billion mobile commerce transactions annually by 2019, up from 72 billion this year. So finds the latest m-commerce forecast from Juniper Research.
According to the report, Mobile Commerce Markets: Key Sector Strategies, Opportunities & Forecasts 2014-2019, highest growth rates are expected in the NFC sector. Here, usage is expected to be buoyed by the launch of Apple Pay , together with a host of anticipated deployments by banks using solutions based on HCE (Host Card Emulation) technology.
However, the highest net increase in transaction volumes will occur in the digital goods sector, fuelled by a surge in micropayments for in-app purchases, notably within arenas such as social gaming. The report highlighted the opportunity for digital content monetisation presented by direct carrier billing, particularly within underbanked regions and demographics.
According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, “Storefronts that have deployed carrier billing solutions have already seen positive results across a range of indicators – higher conversion rates, higher average transaction values, higher transaction volumes. For the first time, they can monetise consumers who would otherwise have been excluded either because they lacked a credit card or because they were unwilling to enter card details online.”
Meanwhile, the report observed that many mobile ticketing deployments had seen rapid adoption rates immediately post-launch, suggesting a pent-up demand for such services. In the US, MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority)’s mTicket accounted for 15% of ticket sales within 9 months of launch, while New York Waterways has reached 25% in less than 2 years.
This boom in digital spending is also backed up by a separate study by Deloitte for UK carrier billing regulator PhonePay Plus, which finds that UK consumers are set to spend £14billion annually by 2019 on digital goods, with £500million of it coming from carrier billing.
