"In the first quarter of the year, Google saw a 217% increase in fashion apparel searches on mobile devices, compared with a 6% rise on desktop computers," he said.
Breuss says e-commerce is on the rise in SA and savvy retailers are increasingly targeting a multichannel experience as cellphone penetration rises.
Zando was launched in SA last year by German group Rocket internet. According to a case study by Google on Zando's mobile strategy, the company's mobile transactions rose more than nine times over 10 months.
Zando's mobile marketing manager, Bronwen Forster, said SA was in a strong position in terms of mobile marketing.
"As an emerging market, where access to the internet is cheaper via the mobile device than on a desktop, the potential and chance for mobile innovation is substantial. More South Africans have access to a mobile device than they do to clean drinking water," she claimed.
Census 2011 findings showed that 89% of South African households had a cellphone, with an average of 3.4 persons per household.
Smartphones continue to be important drivers of mobile commerce in the local market, e-commerce stalwart kalahari.com said.
Mobile traffic as a proportion of total traffic on the company's site increased from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of this year by 110%. Between the first and second quarters of this year it rose by a further 129%.
"Smartphones are key devices in fuelling e-commerce growth. A huge proportion of SA's connected people use the devices to access the internet for online shopping," kalahari.com's chief executive Caren Genthner-Kappesz said.
Earlier this year, the MasterCard Online Shopping Survey revealed that respondents who were shopping online via their cellphones bought low-value items like cellphone apps (45%), music downloads (26%),and tickets for cinemas and theatre performances (13%).
The survey also showed that mobile banking apps were popular in SA, with 29.2% of those with internet access on their cellphones already using them.
According to World Wide Worx's managing director Arthur Goldstuck, it is expected that the advent of transactional apps and the rapid rise of smartphone usage in SA will have a significant impact on online shopping in the coming years.
"Mobile commerce is still in its infancy but as it is made easier, and as users become more familiar with the concept, it will rise at the same rate as web-based online retail," Goldstuck said.
Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge
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