Mobile Payments Market: Tablet Shopping Surges as Mobile Retail Sales Top $60 Billion

Consumer mobile purchasing surged to an all-time high, reaching almost $60 billion and demonstrating triple-digit growth in 2013. Consumers are increasingly turning to tablets and phones for purchasing despite the fact that many sites are not ideally set up yet for mobile devices — and creating opportunity for vendors who are prepared for the onslaught. Vendors and merchants are now challenged to seamlessly integrate mobile into the online and in-store search and shopping experience. Consumer spend on tablets surpassed phones for the first time in 2013 as tablet adoption swelled. This report provides an in-depth study of the mobile purchasing market, including dollar and consumer market sizing of online, app and proximity payments, a five-year forecast of mobile proximity payments, tablet vs. phone dollar market sizing, and frequency and size of median purchases, as well as commerce by device type. It also looks at what factors are holding consumers back from greater mobile purchasing and defines strategies to excel in this expanding market.

Primary Questions:

• What is the size of the online mobile retail payments space?
• What is the projected size of mobile contactless retail payments through 2018?
• What channels are consumers using to purchase and why?
• What channels should merchants be encouraging and why?
• Can merchants and contactless proponents set the groundwork for higher profits from mobile POS payments by deploying other mobile features?
• How can merchants encourage use of particular channels and optimize the user experience on the mobile device?
• How is the tablet transforming the mobile commerce market?
• How does purchasing behavior differ among tablet OS owners?

Companies Mentioned: 

Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM

Press Release: 
Tablet Payments Surge as Overall Mobile Retail Sales Top $60 Billion

• A random‐sample panel of 3,285 consumers in a July 2013 survey. 
• A random‐sample panel of 3,509 consumers in a November 2013 survey. 
• A random‐sample panel of 3,492 mobile phone owners in a June 2012 survey.