• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, June 19, 2015

According to research findings presented by Andrew Lipsman, vice president, marketing and insights, for comScore Inc. at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, in the fourth quarter of 2014, mobile accounted for 13.0% of digital sales, up from 11.1% in the prior quarter, and then continued to increase to a share of 15.4% in the first quarter of 2015.

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, says the report. “… mobile shopping has absolutely exploded and overtaken desktop…” said Lipsman.

Mobile maintains a strong lead in terms of growth in its share of spending by consumers on non-essential products and services like luxury goods and vacation travel, comScore says in its report, “The State of the Mobile Shopper and Buyer,” which Lipsman presented during his IRCE presentation. 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. 

But mobile continues to face challenges, says the report. For example, mobile’s share of consumers’ time spent on retail shopping was 59% to desktop’s 41%, but mobile’s share of spending was 15% to desktop’s 85%, he said. 

One reason for that, says the report, is that consumers still find desktops far easier to use than smartphones or tablets for online shopping. When comparing 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. 
• 36% of consumers said smartphones and desktops were about the same
• 38% said tablets and desktops were about the same

The largest barrier to shopping on smartphones versus desktops, cited by 20.2% of smartphone users and 17.1% of tablet users, was concern over the security of making payments. 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, however, noted that these two barriers should start to become less of a concern for consumers, with mobile phone screens increasing in size, product details will also become more easily visible.

Just as online shoppers have become more confident about shopping online on desktops, they should also become more confident about making payments on mobile devices, he said. “People will get over that as they did in desktops,” Lipsman said. He added, however, in conclusion, challenges will remain even with larger mobile screens, and will still be at noticeable disadvantage compared with desktops and laptops for the foreseeable future.

For more on the study, reported by Internet Retailer, please visit here.