Asia-Pacific along with the Middle East and Africa were global leaders in 2014 when it came to the usage of mobile for online shopping, according to a report by ystats.com.
Over half of online shoppers in these regions made purchases through mobile devices. In South Korea, close to a third of shoppers did so on a weekly basis, with the share of mcommerce on total online sales topping one-third in the third quarter of 2014.
In China, the number of mobile shoppers grew to more than two hundred million, while in India the share of mobile shoppers on online buyers in the cities increased from just over 20% to more than half. Meanwhile, in the Middle East and Africa, mcommerce sales in the UAE grew at a triple-digit rate in 2014, and in South Africa close to a third of smartphone users already had experience with mobile shopping.
In the U.S. the share of mcommerce sales through smartphones was below that of tablets and is forecasted to decrease in the coming years. A similar trend is observed in the UK. Both in Germany and France, the share of mcommerce was a small double-digit figure, while in Russia mcommerce sales were estimated to double last year and in Brazil they reached double-digit share of sales of large online merchants.
Ecommerce companies worldwide benefit from the boom in mcommerce growth, with shares of mobile sales at double-digit figures. Amazon and eBay saw over 60% of their total traffic from mobile devices during the last holiday shopping season, while China-based ecommerce giant Alibaba increased the mobile gross merchandise value on its marketplaces by more than three times.