Apple released the first version of the iPad in 2010 and since about 2012 analysts, journalists and technology enthusiasts have been predicting the day that tablet would dethrone the traditional computer in all major use categories and ring in the new era of eCommerce.
So far, this has not exactly happened. From the vantage point of mid-2014, a lot of tablets have been sold and the technology has certainly improved, but on the surface not much as changed. Traditional computers still represent the majority of computing devices sold, and when it comes to using the Internet for a determined purpose like shopping —the desktop (or laptop) remains go-to tool of choice.
According to a 2011 report by McKinsey and Company, the majority of tablet owners used their device for the consumption of media (movies, television, books, etc) and surfing the web. Flash forward to research released last year by Pew and the use cases remained much the same—the number of Americans who owned tablets had jumped from 3 percent in 2010 to 34 percent in 2013, but most owners were still mainly using their tablets for media consumption, web surfing and social media participation.
When users want to access the web for more active pursuits like making purchases, however, it seems they are still returning to their computers. According to comScore of the $63.4 billion spent during the first quarter of 2014 on digital commerce, desktop based eCommerce contributed $56.1 billion. M-commerce spending on smartphones and tablets, on the other hand contributed $7.3 billion—not an insignificant sum but still only just over 10 percent of total digital commerce.
Under the surface however, the ground is shifting, and perhaps more rapidly than a quick surface glance would imply. One can never under estimate the value of volume, and starting in 2015 it looks like tablet computers will start to gain advantage over traditional computers in the war for numbers. Speed is also a factor, and users are adopting M-Commerce quickly and aggressively, especially as technological barriers to device shopping—mainly in the difficulty in navigating multiple screen—are falling away. Finally, user base matters, and the more affluent and educated than average consumer base associated with the table market are also the group most likely to want to shop digitally from a few different device bases.
More Tablets (And Changing Users)
According to new data published earlier this week by Gartner, 2014 will be the final year that traditional computer will hold the sales age over ultra-mobile tablet computers. There will be 256 million tablets shipped this year versus 308 million PCs. In 2015 that picture will change when 321 million tablets are shipped, versus close to 317 million PCs. The sea change here is on its own is not dramatic—it does not indicate that the time has come for developers, advertisers and eRetailers to abandon the PC as deader than the VCR, since by Gartner’s forecast the balance of shipping/sales between the two is essentially forecasted to be equal.
Still, the crossing of the line matters as indicator of the shape of things to come. Gartner’s study indicates that the rate of adoption of tablets is actually slowing—thought that comes as part of an overall trend that has also seen smartphones and traditional computers—but it is still becoming increasingly the heir apparent to the PC.
And who is buying those computers is interesting. According to Pew’s research, tablet computers’ most likely purchasers are college-educated adults between the ages of 24-44 with an annual income of $76K or more—which aligns rather directly with the demographics mostly likely to spend money online, according to a report by Business Intelligence.
Changing Shopping Habits
Given that group of people who buy tablets are incredibly demographically similar to the people who are likely to shop online, the rapid growth in mobile commerce isn’t all that shocking. Though the $7.6 billion m-commerce brought in during Q1 2014 still represents only a fraction of the total digital retail sales, it does represent a 23 percent improvement from a year ago and nearly doubles the desktop growth rate of 12 percent during the same time period. That rate is widely forecasted to pick up—eMarketer believes that by 2016 25 percent of all mobile will be $87 billion, or a quarter of all e-commerce, reports The New York Times.
And while much that that traffic will come from smartphones, increasingly mobile commerce is shifting to tablets, notes the source, due to their larger screens and relative greater ease of use. Tablet users also tend to spend more then smart phone users when they shop, dropping an average $329 per order as opposed to an average $250.
The Integrated Future
While any shift in balance, no matter how minor, can trigger apocalyptic predictions of ecosystem-wide disruption it seems unlikely that our online life is soon to be entirely dominated by the tablet, phablet, smartphone, wearable or whatever the next great idea in Internet connected portable device is. Mobile still has a ways to go.
However, it is clear that computers are no longer going to be the primary driver on the online ecosystem, and for merchants who sell goods there, the take-away lesson becoming increasingly clear. The online experience is not really a choice between developing desktop based eCommerce hub or a responsive m-commerce experience, the choices are about how to deliver something that moves seamlessly from one online experience to another to match a user group that is increasingly transition between them throughout the day.
“In five years eCommerce and m-commerce will become ‘contextual commerce,'” Schueler says. “The consumer will make a purchase in whatever situation he is in when he realizes the need for that purchase—on a desktop computer at work, on an iPad on the couch at home, on an iPhone as he rides in a car,” said Jeff Schueler, president of Usability Sciences Corp reports Internet Retailer. “That said, the odds of the consumer completing that purchase in a given context is dependent on whether the retailer can, in that context, assure the customer he’s getting the best price, assure the customer he can get it delivered when he wants it, assure the customer he will receive a quality product, and assure the customer the product fits his needs.”
