• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 10, 2015

According to a comScore report at the recent IRCE conference, mobile commerce began to make a noticeable increase in its share of digital commerce sales, jumping to 15.4% after in the first quarter of 2015 after hovering close to 11% for several prior quarters. 

moAndrew Lipsman, VP, Marketing & Insights at comScore, says “…mobile shopping has exploded and overtaken desktop…” 

The report shows that mobile commerce has surged ahead of desktop in terms of time spent shopping, with mobile accounting for 59% of online shopping time in the first quarter on this year, compared with 41% for desktop, though mobile still lags desktop in share of online spending, 15% to 85%,

Mobile maintains a strong lead in terms of growth in its share of discretionary spending, or spending by consumers on non-essential products and services like luxury goods and vacation travel, says the report “The State of the Mobile Shopper and Buyer.”  In the first quarter of this year, mobile’s share of retail spending growth increased 53% year over year, compared with increases of 9% for desktop retail e-commerce and 2% for total discretionary retail spending. 

However, says the report, consumers still find desktops far easier to use than smartphones or tablets for online shopping. When comparing compared mobile devices with desktops, 50% of consumers find smartphones more difficult to use than desktops, while 47% find tablets more difficult to use. By comparison, 14% of consumers said smartphones were easier than desktops for online shopping; 17% said tablets were easier to use.  

The report says that the largest barrier cited by consumers to shopping on smartphones versus desktops was concern over the security of making payments, cited by 20.2% of smartphone users and 17.1% of tablet users. The second most commonly cited barrier was the inability to see product details, cited by 19.6% of smartphone users and 15.0% of tablet users. 

Lipsman concluded, however, these two barriers should start to become less of a concern for consumers, as online shoppers have become more confident about shopping online on desktops. And, as mobile phone screens increase in size, product details will also become more easily visible.

For more from Internet Retailer, please visit here.