2012 Predictions: Brave New Mobile World

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We have now entered a long, persistent mobile era. And we doesn’t just mean the 1 percent. Not anymore. A Pew report released yesterday found that the number of American adults with tablets nearly doubled from 10 percent to 19 percent in just the last month.

More and more, people all over the world, in every demographic and, increasingly, more varied socioeconomic levels, are shedding their desktop anchor. For the first time ever, global shipments of smart phones and tablets exceed shipments of PCs. And this past December, Americans averaged 22 more minutes a day with mobile apps than browsing the web.

Predictably, affluent users are leading this charge. While 7 percent of all web traffic in the U.S. occurs on a mobile device, double that–more than14 percent–of all prestige-brand searches take place on the go. And these people aren’t just browsing, they’re buying, too. By 2016, mobile commerce is estimated to quintuple in growth, a significant share of which will occur in the luxury markets.

The iPad, which accounts for almost 70 percent of the total media tablet market share, is the no-surprise star here. Luxury brands register conversion rates two to three times higher on iPads than on traditional PCs—an impressive statistic in light of the fact that 16 percent of these brands don’t even offer an m-commerce option.

But hopefully, by next Christmas, this won’t be the case. At least of 19 percent of Americans are counting on it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday January 24, 2012 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Media, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.