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Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London. She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect. When it comes to work, she feels most... ? Learn More
Mobile devices, by some estimates, will become a replacement for your wallet in the future, with NFC, dongles and sophisticated apps helping you buy things and manage the rest of your financial life, and with companies like Visa getting in on the action and eBay/PayPal expecting $8 billion in mobile transactions this year. But in reality, when it comes to using a mobile to buy something, most of us are not.
A poll from Harris Interactive, commissioned by the location-based shopping alert provider Placecast, found that only one in five people — 20 percent — of adult mobile owners have used their devices in the last year to purchase goods and services, whether that is at a point of sale or via a mobile app or site.
As for how many consumers actually wanted purchasing functionality in their devices, 62 percent said it was “not at all important.”
Harris’ numbers, which are based on a poll of nearly 2,000 users, take into account both smartphone and regular phone owners, and are doubtless skewed by the fact that low-end device owners are being considered here as well.
Research from Nielsen on mobile commerce found much higher numbers when considering owners of smartphones and tablets. In Q1 2012, 79 percent of smartphone and tablet owners used their devices for “shopping-related” activities. But even in Nielsen’s case, only 29 percent of smartphone owners had actually used their devices to purchase something.
As you would expect, Harris found that mobile-commerce activities are more popular among smartphone owners than among those with feature phones. It found that 34 percent of smartphone owners had purchased items with their mobile devices, compared to just 11 percent of feature phone owners.
That was apparent in other aspects of mobile commerce as well — for example, 50 percent of smartphone users said they’d used GPS or a mapping app (the most popular “m-commerce”-related activity, according to the poll) to find the location of a business; that number dropped to only 11 percent on more basic devices.
Part of this might be due to the lack of features in feature phones, but it also indicates that progress will only come when more people are using smartphones.
For feature phone users, the most popular activity was browsing the websites of retailers on their mobile devices. This, however, was only done by 13 percent of responding consumers.
Placecast is a location-based digital advertising company that provides ShopAlerts, an opt-in marketing service via mobile devices designed to drive customers to specific physical spaces like retail stores. ShopAlerts is a white-label service that works automatically on any phone and does not require an app. Users opt-in to a given brand’s program and receive text messages on their phone with information, coupons and offers from places of interest around them. Placecast was founded in 2005 and is based in San...
Learn more Harris Interactive is one of the world’s leading custom market research firms, leveraging research, technology, and business acumen to transform relevant insight into actionable foresight. Known widely for the Harris Poll and for pioneering innovative research methodologies, Harris offers expertise in a wide range of industries including healthcare, technology, public affairs, energy, telecommunications, financial services, insurance, media, retail, restaurant, and consumer package goods. Serving clients in over 215 countries and territories through their North American, European, and Asian offices...
Learn more PayPal is an online payments and money transfer service that allows you to send money via email, phone, text message or Skype. They offer products to both individuals and businesses alike, including online vendors, auction sites and corporate users. PayPal connects effortlessly to bank accounts and credit cards. PayPal Mobile is one of PayPal’s newest products. It allows you to send payments by text message or by using PayPal’s mobile browser. PayPal created the Gausebeck-Levchin test, which is an implementation...
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