M-Commerce Is Alive And Well At Amazon.com
I’ve always said that straight m-commerce didn’t make much sense to me. I couldn’t fathom a situation where you’d be so desperate to buy something (like a book) and then wait a few days for it to arrive, such that you couldn’t wait until you got to a computer to order it. Specifically, I was even thinking about some of the earliest m-commerce applications that Amazon.com offered over Sprint PCS phones. So consider me surprised to find out that m-commerce is alive and well at Amazon.com. While they admit their early efforts weren’t so hot, there was enough activity to encourage them to keep exploring. These days, they say they have about 500,000 customers transacting through mobile devices (they don’t say if this is an all-time count, over a certain period of time, or regularly). They also say that they’ve taken orders from 87 different devices – though, I wonder how they count. For example, I could probably order via my Danger Hiptop (I’ve never tried), but I’m not sure how they would know it was coming from the Hiptop as opposed to a regular web browser. They also say that they look to their m-commerce buyers to understand what’s coming next, since they’re often the early adopters.
Filed Under: mcommerce
