Future Of Ecommerce In Mobile Internet

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Nov 05, 2014

The Internet and computers have gone through sea change since the time they were born. Just a few years back it was through a wire plugging into your hefty PC which was stationary at one corner of your room and to get access you had to wait to reach the PC. But then laptops came and changed the concept of computing. It was more about mobility now, and you could enjoy the Internet even while you were traveling either through WiFi or dongles. But then this was not the end or the ultimate point.

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Tablets came in and though it did not get much fanfare, it kick-started the era of smartphones which is the current craze across the globe. Just in the last couple of months the markets have been flooded with smartphones of which many we have covered in our earlier topics and many more that the world has witnessed. Now with the evolution of the devices the evolution of internet usage pattern is also imminent. This is where the current IT giants like Facebook (FB, Financial), Google (GOOG, Financial) and Amazon (AMZN, Financial) will have an uphill task to work out their equations to keep pace with the changing trends.

Ecommerce and mobile Internet

If we look ahead 5 to 8 years from now, it will be difficult to predict that Facebook and Google will enjoy the same prominence then as they are enjoying now. Well, with the recent advances of ecommerce around the globe in a big way, even the ecommerce honchos will have to take note of the change in trend. The biggest reason why they are headed the way of the dodo bird is because of the rapid shift to mobile from desktop that is currently upon us. That shift has only accelerated since May.

In the world of technology, 1 year is a long time; 5-8 years is like a century compared to most industries. So, I still feel pretty confident in my assertions about a big change in the IT companies and ecommerce in specific.

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Shopping has now become the most popular activity when people have spare time and with the ongoing diversification of work travel has become an integral part of work. While on the go people definitely want to check through and shop online and with the modern day smartphones providing a seamless computing experience it is not a very difficult task. Hence ecommerce giants like Amazon have to adopt to the new trend fast or face the lull of business like what it did to Walmart (WMT, Financial).

Back in 1994, Jeff Bezos who was then working for the ultimate quant hedge fund on Wall Street – D.E. Shaw – decided to move to Seattle and start Amazon.com. Most of America still wouldn’t know what the Internet was for another year or so, once they started to get flooded with AOL (AOL, Financial) CDs in their mailboxes.

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Even though customers had the option of Walmart what made Amazon great was its new format of shopping taking the stores online and converting the shelves and racks of the stores into virtual shelves to fit in our PC screens. It also understood all the aspects of the shopping experience that were going to be important to new onliners compared to what they looked for when they walked into brick-and-mortar retail stores. Amazon took care of both the presentable aspect and the backstage well. Neatly done website, recommendations, one-click shopping and reviews. Even the back office operation like order processing, logistics and distribution were well taken care of. In reality they brought Walmart virtually to our PCs and doorsteps. No doubt Amazon had to put in a lot of time and effort to pan out this model, but it opened the doors for a new realm in the retail sector and currently enjoys the crown of success around the world.

Online to mobile shopping transition

Now users are accessing content from their mobile devices as their primary computing devices instead of their PCs for the first time. To now all successful web companies has considered this shift as an extension of the existing model and that is why Mark Zuckerberg had called the iPad, just another PC. But this phenomenal shift cannot be adjudged as just an extension because with the paradigm shift in trend towards smartphones the whole web world players have to recognize the moves and have to work out their viability in terms of mobile internet.

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According to most analysts in the sector, the incumbent web leaders have to maneuver their operation towards more of mobile internet more so because it’s already clear that there are subtle differences that can have a huge impact on monetization.

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Keeping this in mind, Amazon has to make changes to its functionality to sync with the mobile netizens in order to maintain its lead in the retail market or might get phased out rapidly as in the tech space every movement happens very fast and would not even get a second chance to re-launch.