Mobile Commerce Revenues Growing, To Reach $1.1 Trillion in 2018

Global mobile Internet commerce growth is projected to balloon to US$850 billion [$1.1 trillion] in 2018. Asia will be the top user of mobile commerce, with probably half of the predicted revenues coming from the region, according to the projections.

Tech Crunch reports data from Digi-Capital showed that from US$300 billion in 2014, revenues would reach $US850 billion in just three years. Mobile commerce is the use of phones or laptops when conducting commercial transactions online such as in the purchase of goods and services. "Despite huge scale and growth, mobile is still evolving. M-commerce remains the primary engine of growth," it noted.

Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company, is a major player in the market competing with the likes of Amazon and eBay. Walmart, meanwhile, is planning to tap into the vast Chinese market by launching a shopping app.

Revenue forecast by Digi-Capital also noted that mobile ad spending could rise to US$85 billion in 2018, a slow growth compared to mobile commerce. United States will still lead in mobile advertising compared to China, Japan and South Korea.

Consumer app revenue is projected to increase from more than US$30 billion now to US$75 billion in 2018. Game apps are taking a big chunk of the apps revenues last year.

"Higher growth rates across sectors other than games could drive non-games revenue share to almost half by 2018. App-as-a-Service subscription models are also supplementing the in-app purchase model for dominant free apps," the report said.

It added that mobile Internet, though considerably a young industry, have "disrupted the market more rapidly and fundamentally than the original Web 20 years ago. While the top-grossing charts are relatively mature, rapid growth and change across the rest of the market means there is still a lot to play for."

Data from Statista projected that by 2018, the number of phone users will reach 5.5 billion, a high leap in 2012 when there were 4.1 billion users. As of May 2015, 1.5 million apps are available for Android phone users on Google Plat Store. Apple's App Store meanwhile has 1.4 million available apps.

Due to the advent of mobile use, recent studies have shown that more people are using mobile devices to go online. One area that is being tapped is the audio platform.

Audiboom (LSE:BOOM), a spoken-word audio platform, is also one application that can be accessed via mobile phones. This platform allows smart phone and website users to record, upload and playback digital audio recordings. These recordings can also be embedded in the form of listen again players on users' websites.

The digital audios can be shared via social media. Journalists, radio personalities, teachers, authors and actors use the audio platform to produce and share their content. The company's content partners include BBC, Telegraph, Guardian, CBS, Sky Sports, Premier League, Southern Cross Austereo, Reuters, CNBC, Universal and Fox.

Contact the writer: a.lu@ibtimes.com.au