Mobile commerce is set to be the next big wave in the digital commerce space.
Less than two weeks ago, Myntra made a ‘not-so-surprising’ statement— it will shut down its website by the end of the year and focus only on the sales through its mobile app.
Various reports also pointed out that the decision could be because Myntra is already getting as much as 60 percent of its sales and 80 percent of its traffic through its mobile app. For the fashion e-tailer, it certainly was a bold move. At the same time, Myntra was only trying to ride, what seems to be the next wave in the ecommerce space—mobile ecommerce.
And it’s not just Myntra. Snapdeal announced last year that it drives close to 50 percent of its sales through mobile, which is a sharp spike from the 5 percent it witnessed the previous year. The ‘Bansal Brothers’, Flipkart's founders have already made it clear that they see themselves as the “mobile e-commerce company of the future”. Most of the e-commerce giants have already made significant investments in this area.
Mobile, thus, clearly seems to be overtaking web transactions in new markets like fashion. In India, it seems to be an obvious choice for shoppers for various reasons.
Here are some numbers. A report published by Forrester Research last year throws some favorable numbers. India is the second largest mobile market in terms of subscribers after China with 900 million mobile subscriptions as of March 2014. Interestingly, 92 percent of internet subscribers in India access the internet via mobile phones and wireless dongles. And mobile is in fact the only way to access the internet in many smaller cities in India—making it one of the most lucrative target for online retailers.
Though mCommerce currently accounts for a smaller portion of the overall retail market, its potential for growth seems to be unmistakably high. According to Gartner, 30 percent of traffic for e-commerce sites come from mobile and tablets. (as of October 2014).
“The heavy influence of mobile devices and wireless Internet has led to a mobile mind shift among Indian consumers — the expectation that they can get what they want in their immediate context and moments of need. This trend is particularly evident in retail; today’s consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices to accomplish a variety of shopping-related tasks online,” said Katyayan Gupta, analyst, Forrester Research. If all the factors become favorable, 2015 will be the year of m-commerce
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