The Mobile App Opportunity For Developers

How ISVs are poised to cash in on mobile retail madness

If the busiest shopping weekend of 2015 showed us anything, it’s that mobile retail has gone mainstream. The Adobe Index, which tracks spending at the top 100 retailers in the nation, reported that retailers were expected to tally digital sales of $3 billion on Cyber Monday—up 12 percent from last year—and the big news is that smartphones are supporting much of that growth. According to the Index, more than $514 million in sales were attributed to mobile, including $313 million from smartphones and $201 million from tablets. IBM Watson pegs holiday sales attributed to mobile at 75 percent higher than the same period last year, and it says 2015 marks the first time that smartphones drove more sales than tablets.

This big-picture of mobile retail mania is promising news for ISVs, and it’s proof positive that the time to capitalize on mobile is now. Consumers are leveraging their phones as a shopping medium of choice, and while the savviest of retailers were already prepared for it heading into this holiday season, much of the market is racing to catch up. In its Retail Tech Spending 2016: The Digitization of the Physical Domain report, Innovate Retail Technologies forecasts that a third of retailers are investing heavily in WiFi in 2016 to help bridge the physical/digital gap for their shoppers. With the infrastructure falling into place, the market is ripe for inventive mobile retailing applications..