Study: Mobile retail to grow as much as 68% in 2016

NEW YORK — Mobile purchasing looks set for major growth in 2016.

 

According to new projections from Bizrate Insights, a division of Connextiy, based on month-over-month order volume in November 2015, mobile website purchases will increase by as much as 68% from 2015 to 2016. The peak volume during the 2016 holiday season may reach as high as 42%, nearly half of all online orders.



This does not include in-app purchases, meaning total mobile purchases will almost certainly total a higher percentage of all online orders in 2016. When broken out between smartphone and tablet, Bizrate Insights’ 2016 projections show a clear majority of website purchases going to phones, which represented 33% of all online orders in November.

 

Meanwhile, in the absence of meaningful innovation, tablet purchases are expected to stagnate, if not decline slightly. However, retailers should not discount tablets as an e-commerce platform entirely. Although smartphones have overtaken tablets in mobile website purchases since the early summer of 2015, orders placed by iPads still surpassed individual iPhone and Android phone volume through the year.