Clothing, shoes and accessories were the top selling items via m-commerce in Australia in 2010, beating out other products including music downloads, movie tickets and apps.
The revelation was contained in 'm-commerce: Secure Insight', a report commissioned by PayPal into the state of m-commerce in Australia and released to the market this week.
Key findings of the report include Australians spent a total of $155 million via m-commerce in 2010. Also, smart phones - or mobiles that incorporate advanced functionality and connectivity similar to a personal computer – have grown to account for 63 per cent of mobile phones in Australia.
The report revealed smart phone ownership jumped 20 per cent in the last year alone.
PayPal Australia managing director Frerk-Malte Feller said the arrival of m-commerce was likely to signal “more change in the next three years than we have seen in the last decade”.
“The numbers speak for themselves and of PayPal's 3.6 million active consumer accounts, 400,000 plus have already used their mobile phone to transact with PayPal. Today, over 10 per cent of PayPal customers have transacted on their mobile – this is up from just one per cent last year,” Feller said.
“Based on these figures our call to action to our merchant partners could not be stronger.”
Convenience was cited by 76 per cent of surveyed consumers as the key reason they used m-commerce, though 51 per cent were not convinced the current security measures for mobile transactions are adequate.
Feller said while many retailers were reporting up to 25 per cent of their online traffic was coming from mobile phones, consumer demand was still outpacing m-commerce innovation.
“...[M]obile website traffic does not equal conversion. Whilst consumer desire to transact over mobile devices is here, merchants must develop mobile optimised sites to drive conversion,” Feller said.
“Australian retailers were late to the e-commerce market and cannot afford to make the same mistake again.”
PayPal commissioned The Nielsen Company to conduct the research into the state of the Australian m-commerce market. The Nielsen Company utilised an online survey to collect responses from over 500 Australian consumers aged and 18 and above, while the m-commerce results were based on 165 shoppers from mobile devices.