Mobile Marketing and Commerce Strategies

Despite expectations in January that it would hit just U.S.$8 billion in transactions via mobile, eBay CEO John Donahoe now says the firm is on track to hit U.S.$10 billion this year—and its PayPal unit, once set for just U.S.$7 billion, is expected to do the same.

 

AllThingsD reports the numbers are staggering, especially when compared to eBay’s U.S.$5 billion and PayPal’s U.S.$4 billion in mobile transactions last year. Donahoe attributes the success to the fact that eBay is a marketplace and not tied to any single retailer, leading to unprecedented volume in the mobile space. To date, eBay apps have been downloaded 90 million times, up from 65 million in January.

 

Yankee Group Principal Analyst Nick Holland comments

 

“PayPal doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with its mobile payment forecasts and conceivably the end-of-year figure could be even higher. It is true the company has a significant advantage over other e- and m-commerce payment mechanisms due to its direct link to eBay. It is also true that ‘mobile’ in this context may be something of a gray area, also including tablets as mobile devices, which could be skewing the figures upward considerably. Nonetheless, U.S.$10 billion is a large sum and clearly a rapidly growing proportion of PayPal’s overall transaction volume. Mobile is the key to future revenue growth for PayPal—allowing access to untapped market share currently ‘owned’ by credit card companies.”