eBay did $13bn on mobile in 2012eBay Europe CEO, Alexander von Schirmeister, has just left the stage at IAB Mobile Engage after revealing a number of stats round the importance of mobile to eBay’s businesses.
He said that between them, eBay, PayPal and Gsi Commerce “touched” $175bn last year, a figure as a way to rise to $300bn in 2015.
He told delegates: “Talking about mCommerce and eCommerce is not any longer relevant, in no way in retail. The smartphone has fundamentally changed the retail ecosystem. (It) has brought offline and online retailers together. If anyone thought physical retail commerce was dying, in general, mobile is bringing it back big time.”
He went directly to say that this brings its own challenges, that the market obliges you as a retailer to have an omnichannel presence. This begs the question, without a doubt , of whether eBay will ever make a significant assault at the High Street, beyond its 2-week pop-up stores. (I filed the question on Twitter as we were invited to do firstly of the day, but no response as yet.)
Interestingly, as I write this, Sienne Veit, head of mobile at Kiddicare, is on a mobile commerce panel, and is explaining how Kiddicare took the bizarre step for a pureplay online retailer of opening physical stores, and explaining how the emblem leverages its digital assets in those stores, and to drive shoppers in to them. Kiddicare made its move into bricks and mortar retail after buying 10 former Best Buy stores in January 2012.
Back to the stats, von Schirmeister revealed that eBay transacted $13bn on mobile in 2012, and that globally, one third of eBay’s global transactions involved mobile in the future within the process. eBay’s apps was downloaded 160m times, and it offers 350m items at anybody time, of which 70 per cent are new, and 72 per cent are sold on a set price basis. Clearly then, anyone who still thinks of eBay as an auction site must arise to hurry.
He finished up by explaining how eBay had adopted a policy of embracing and protecting disruptive innovation. When developing its mobile properties, the teams engaged on them were instructed to not worry in regards to the impact their work would have at the remainder of the business, or the friction it should cause.
“That friction continues to be there within the company today. They were encouraged to not worry about upsetting folks. If we had stopped to integrate first, we’d not be where we’re today,”he told delegates. “You can’t afford to get slowed down by internal politics and large working groups where the consensus would probably have shut down half the apps involved.”