Technological innovation has brought a revolution in how marketing and consumer engagement are perceived in retail sector. Availability of multiple shopping channels has impacted consumer behavior and provided easy ways to shop on the go. The power of M-commerce now is expected to have a strong impact on lives of millions of people in the nearest future.

Numbers of smartphones shipped by the year-end 2014 contributed a staggering 73.4% to global smart connected devices (SCD) shipments and tablets 12.5%. In contrast, PCs share witnessed a decline contributing a 16.8% during the same period. The figures make it pretty evident that trend of using PCs to surf the internet for shopping, entertainment, social media, navigation, hotel booking etc. is shifting towards mobile devices.

A recent research estimates that almost half of online retail sales in the seven largest EU markets will happen on mobile devices by 2018. Online retail sales through mobile devices saw 47% year-over-year growth in mid-2014 compared to 10% for desktops. Retailers are also able to market their products in a better way with the help of innovative mobile tools like shopping apps, location-based services, and mobile wallets.

Due to the convenience of exploring retail products from anywhere, anytime via mobile devices, 53% of consumers admit that they end up making 33% more purchases. On the other hand, 55% consumers believe that being able to shop online through mobile devices has come to them as a great way to manage their free time more effectively.

Reasons why more consumers are now trusting and adopting mobile retail are as follows:

• Security - With more secured online payment gateways, consumers now dont worry a lot about frauds as they previously did.
• Ease* - Consumers no longer have to devote a lot of time traveling to a store to buy retail products of their favorite brands. Mobile sites, shopping apps etc. put them at such an ease that they can even shop while sitting on a couch at their homes.
• Product Clarity* - Technology advancement has made it possible to have a clear view of products, which does not lead customers to doubt that the products they are looking at might be different when arrive at their doorstep.
• Connection and Data Usage - Almost every mobile platform is now compatible with shopping websites, causing no trouble to customers while exploring a wide range of products available on multi- commercial channels. Moreover, data usage is also not much, which often kept consumers in the past deprived of shopping via mobile devices.
• Fun/Engagement - Shopping websites and various apps created for the purpose are designed keeping in mind consumer engagement and fun of real shopping. Consumers can easily, quickly add shipping addresses and are not required to face the hassle of adding the same addresses again for future purchases.
  

  
  

  What impacts M-commerce would have on businesses:

  Almost every business will be required to adapt to M-commerce to survive in the digital age. For example, retailers would have to look forward to development of immaculate shopping apps for famous mobile platforms. There are many companies available in tech market, however, the wise approach is to outsource your app development project to an experienced, tested App Development company as it helps not only in reducing business cost, but ensuring delivery of quality apps as well.
  

  
  

  Despite many businesses making efforts to bank on their own branded apps to ensure customer engagement and sales, they are not able to derive benefits due to low in-app conversion rates. The competition has gone high due to maturing mobile space, in addition to huge cost involved in encouraging customers to install the apps and acquiring them. To make it worse, there is no assurance that these customers will actually interact with the app.
  

  
  

  However, app designs have now become much better and apt for mobile sales than they were a year ago. Now, the apps support links and do not offer troubles to users while getting directly to a companys webpage. Driven by technological advancement in app development, companies have now started making profits from deep-linked content and the in-app URL that takes customers where they need to be to complete a purchase.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Tablets in the UK have more than doubled the contribution in mobile retails sales than smartphones, encouraging mobile device manufacturers to build larger phone screens. So, now we have Phablet - a mix of smartphone and tablet. Retail experts world over foresee a kind of inevitable near-future trend of phones with larger screens being used as a shopping device by more and more people every year.
  

  
  

  For mobile data usage, entertainment and books category initially remained predominant in retail sector. Now, food and grocery category has emerged as a new leader in online retail sector, with many people becoming irresistible to the ease of satiating their hunger and fulfilling their kitchen needs through order