Consumers Making Purchases Via Smartphones Jump to New High
More consumers are purchasing goods and services over their mobile devices than ever before, according to a recent study by global payment processor, Adyen. In fact, as of August 2013, mobile transactions from Adyen’s payment platform accounted for 17.5 percent of all worldwide digital purchases processed over its global payment solution, up from 13.8 percent at the end of April, a jump of 27 percent.
Smartphones are also becoming the preferred method over tablets for making purchases on a mobile device. Adyen’s outsourced transaction services, which can accommodate more than 230 different payment methods, processed more purchases via smartphone than tablets for the first time since May 2012. In terms of all digital purchases on the Adyen platform, smartphone purchases accounted for 52.6 percent of mobile purchases processed by Adyen from May to August, while tablet purchases represented 47.4 percent.
“One possible explanation for this reversal is a change in consumer behavior during the summer vacation season, in which highly-portable smartphones are much more convenient for on-the-go mobile purchases than less-portable tablet devices,” Adyen said.
Consumers are increasingly buying tickets for concerts, movies, sporting events and travel over their smartphones and tablets. Travel-related purchases jumped 20.5 percent over the period of May to August 2013, while ticketing services jumped 22 percent. Consumers are also using their mobile devices to make more retail purchases, which climbed 16.75 percent over the same period. Mobile digital content purchases, including books, movies, music, software, and services, also increased, rising 10. 5 percent while only gaming showed an overall decline in mobile purchases of 5.5 percent.
On a mobile operating system level, the payment company reported that Apple’s iOS remains dominant in mobile transactions, with nearly 75 percent of all mobile purchases processed by Adyen coming from iPhones and iPads, or 13.1 percent of all worldwide digital transactions. Google’s Android was a distant second, with 25 percent of all Adyen-brokered mobile transactions coming from Android devices.
Devices running Microsoft’s Windows Phone accounted for only 0.6 percent of all mobile transactions from May to August, Adyen reported, but that actually represented a 20 percent increase from the previous period. However, Adyen said that Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia would bring the handset maker serving up 80 percent of all mobile transactions made on Windows Phone devices into the Microsoft fold.
As for Blackberry? Things didn’t fare well. The company dropped to the point that its devices served up just 0.3 percent of all global mobile transactions in the period covered.