Mobile e-retail sales trebled in 2012

Tina SpoonerUK consumers spent £7.5bn last year through smartphones and tablets, according to data from the IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking.

This represents a 300% increase over the year before and means mobile has now trebled from 4% of e-retail sales to 12%.

However, the researchers did notice a drop off in the last quarter of the year. Had the spending curve of the first half of the year continued, mobile could have accounted for as much as one in five e-retail sales.

Similarly the researchers had thought mobile visits to retailers would have hit the 30% mark, if growth earlier in the year had continued. However, it still managed to average out at 24%, nearly one in four visits to retailers.

For Tina Spooner, Chief Information Officer at IMRG, the findings underline the progress mobile has made in retailing

“2012 is regarded by many as the year mobile truly arrived and these figures certainly justify that claim,” she said.

“The IMRG Capagemini Quarterly Benchmarking has shown sales via mobile devices have tripled in the space of a year, which is a trend supported by our separate m-Retail Index, where average growth in 2012 was 304%. While we are starting to see a levelling off in the growth of both sales and visits, 1 in 8 sales and 1 in 5 visits were through mobile devices in 2012 and conversion rates continue to rise.”