Capitalising on a connected Christmas

While Christmas may now seem like a distant memory, lost in the fog of being back at work, drizzle and cold weather, it has been hard to escape Yuletide tales this week, as everyone and his dog with an interest (and some without!) release their figures as to just how mobile this Christmas was.

No longer is there any debate that mobile commerce is a cornerstone of the festive season, but more it is a race now, each January, to get the figures out there as to just how mobile it has been.

And it seems that it has been a festival of mobile-ness – most notably on tablets: but more of that anon.

According to IBM, mobile shopping grew by 186.5% between December 2010 and December 2011 as people found doing their shopping while slumped in front of the TV very attractive.

Adobe meanwhile has suggested that, in the run up to Christmas, tablet users were the biggest online spenders. No surprise there: you have to have wonga to have a tablet in my book.

Adfonic found that clicks on its adverts – which it uses as a lose way of measuring mobile browsing – grew steadily in the first half of December 2011, then took off from about the 11^th, as people panicked and started shopping.

The biggest ‘surprise’ was that Adfonic saw a peak on Christmas day from 10am until 3pm. This was put down to people getting devices – iPod Touchs, iPhones, iPads, games consoles and similar – for Christmas then mucking about with them until sitting down to a boozy lunch.

So what does this tell us? Well it shows that mobile and tablet commerce is here to stay and is slowly becoming the preferred way of consumers buying things. But longer term – such as the rest of the year ahead that isn’t Christmas – it means that we now have a substantial user base of consumers that are now m-commerce savvy and this is what the telemedia industry needs to exploit.

We need to look at how to tap into this growing enjoyment and understanding of how to use mobile to consumer and tap into that. A good first step would be a visit to the excellent Mobile Retail Summit at the Victoria Park Plaza in London next Thursday (26^th Jan) (http://mretailsummit.com/)

Then look at how the wider world of mobile commerce – that exploits the whole commercial potential in any vertical market of mobile – can impact your business at Telemedia’s own series of Connected Summits taking place in April and May at the Kings Fund in London.

25 April: MGambling Summit 

26 April: MSport Summit

15 May: Connected Media & Entertainment Summit

16 May: Connected Marketing & Commerce Summit

Details to come soon...