Why Mobile Shopping Could Be As Big As Online Shopping

Although few consumers make purchases using their phones, smartphones are playing a critical role in purchasing decisions, according to a study released by ForeSee Results on Monday.
The study, which surveyed 10,000 visitors to top e-retailer sites, found that 11% of them made a purchase using their phones this holiday season, compared to only 2% at the same time last year.
Thirty percent of visitors, however, used their phones to compare product details, look up prices, or find store locations. In 2009, only 11% of consumers surveyed said they used their phones to do this kind of research. Shoppers who were highly satisfied with a retailer’s mobile experience were 30% more likely to buy from that retailer both online and offline.
Mobile’s role in retail today has many parallels to the Internet's role in retail when online shopping was in its infancy. About three years after Amazon (1995) and eBay (1996) launched, estimated online sales totaled $6.1 billion — only 0.2% of total retail – according to a Gartner Survey quoted in a Time Magazine cover story that ran that year.
As the study suggests is the case with mobile users, many Internet users started making relationships with retailers online long before they purchased from them there. In 2000, a Pew Internet survey found that while 46% of surveyed Internet users had made a purchase online, 73% had used the Internet to research a product. Even so, forecasts in the early years of online shopping estimated as much as a 233% increase over two years.
The future looks similarly bright for mobile shopping. eBay reported that mobile shopping on its app increased 134% this holiday season, and Amazon is bringing in $1 billion annually from mobile sales. A report by ABI Research found that mobile online shopping in the United States rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009. The same survey predicted that mobile would bring in $119 billion by 2015.
That’s not to say that mobile commerce doesn’t face some significant obstacles in becoming mainstream. A 2009 survey put smartphone penetration at about 17% in the United States. That still leaves out a lot of potential customers. But so did Internet access before it became nearly ubiquitous.
“I question if it’ll ever be big,” one man told the Time Magazine article’s authors about online shopping in 1998.
As online retailers brought in more than $1 billion on last Cyber Monday alone, this comment sounds a bit silly today.
While smartphone penetration is still low, smartphone sales are soaring. Might mobile retailers one day have similarly smug feelings toward today’s critics of mobile commerce?