Mobile eats the World

Tweet

Mobile is eating the world, more faster than ever, and we already witnessed the dawn of PC and laptop as the ultimate consumer devices.

In 2002, the total of mobile subscriptions has finally surpassed the landlines' subscriptions.

Back in 2011, another 2 significant milestones happened, it signifies the way things are moving forward and beyond.

Milestone 1: Smartphones beat PC shipments 
For 1st time ever in 2011, smartphones shipments beats PC shipments ~ 487 Million vs 414 Million, with 73 million more units being sold. (sources: digitaltrends.com)

Milestone 2: E-Books Outsell Print Books at Amazon
Since April 1, Amazon sold 105 books for its Kindle e-reader for every 100 hardcover and paperback books, including books without Kindle versions and excluding free e-books. (sources: Amazon PR)

As for tablet, shipments ia about 60 million units (Apple's ipad account for 40 million) in 2011, projected to be 90~95 million units in 2012 and it will also exceed Desktop PC in 2013 (This year as this post is penned). (sources: Appleinsider)

Amazing isn't it? It is not a surprise that mobile devices like smartphones and tablets is already at the centre of our life, what surprise me the most, is how fast the mobile devices getting adopted and start changing the way we work, play and shop!



What amaze me the most is the iPad - a tablet by Apple which finally CRACK IT. If you give an iPad to a newborn, they intuitively understand how to use it! This totally blows me away. The last time I had such feeling was my first encounter with PC back in 1988.



The impact of mobile adoption to e-commerce industry is undoubtedly huge, these are the few key areas ecommerce merchants are looking into when it comes to adopting mobile strategies into their business - "mobile checkout", "mobile web optimization", "mobile app", "tablet app", "SMS" and "responsive web design".

The mobile is becoming the consumers' Primary Internet Access Device, irregardless of what business you are in, you must have a mobile strategy to survive and thrive.

Recommended reading:
John Doerr sees the NEXT BIG THING
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/05/john-doerr-the-next-big-thing/

Interesting mobile stats by Baidu
http://www.techinasia.com/baidu-mobile-traffic-stats-2012-q2/

Top 2012 Mobile Infographics
http://www.businessinsider.com/bii-mobile-insights-the-top-2012-mobile-infographics2-2012-12

Tesco Malaysia Soft Launch, but Pre-registration Fail

Tweet

Tesco Malaysia (a 70:30 joint venture between Tesco and Sime Darby Bhd), a hypermarket giant from UK, soft launch their Tesco eStore locally to sell groceries and daily households items to Malaysian

Tesco, according to wikipedia, is the third-largest retailer in the world  So of course, our expectation is HIGH.

Then I tried to sign in with my pre-registered account details, this is what I am greeted with:

Then was the proof I did sign up for an account in prior. Then after going through the details, I suspect this is not working either due to following 2 reasons:

1) My area, Cheras is not covered, that's the reason they didn't sync my details with the live Tesco stores or

2) They pre-registration process is not integrated nor part of the live store sign up process, it is mainly treated as email newsletter to inform new customers if their area is covered. (Suggest Tesco to change the "pre-registration" naming as it suggest pre-register for an account and can be very confusing like what I just experienced) 

Leaving me no choice, I re-register again. Then I found my office area is not covered. This article by Amanz.my cited that places close to tesco stores will be covered, there's a Tesco store just 2KM away from my office! (Postcode: 56100)

Tesco is just 2KM away from my office, maybe they just want me to exercise more...  

Then I tried input using dummy data, I found out the form is very rigid, very structured, they pre-loaded all the values for you, even to your suburb (come on... nobody use this suburb term here...) and street!

I don't know why Tesco being this extremely rigid on the household address, but from what I observed, I suspect maybe this is how they control the expectation of their fulfilment service, given they let you select the timezone (an interval of 2 hours each, see below pictures from Amanz.my). This is some really tough operation.

Let's see how this evolve from here. Tesco is a highly successful retailer who knows how to run eCommerce and I'm sure their investment will move the industry forward here.

But still... can anyone tell me why Kuala Lumpur is a city/town of Selangor? If you already shop at Tesco eStore, let us know in the comment below on how was the experience like?

For those who haven't tried, take note of Guide Price before you start shopping! Cheers!

Note: 

Check out this too!

Other online groceries websites in Malaysia (by MalaysiaCrunch.com)

Is facebook commerce dead?

Tweet

Facebook Commerce (f-commerce) pioneer, Payvment.com, just announced that it will cease operation on 28th Feb 2013 and the entire team will be acquired by Intuit.com - US largest provider of small business financial software.

This comes as quite a surprise for me, cause I personally think Payvment has first mover advantage in the field of social commerce. They had also raised in excess of USD 7 million in funding and is one of the featured facebook open graph partner. I expected them to stick around much longer.

Does it mean social commerce is over?

Let's do a quick reality check, I think most of you shop online, but how many of you actually bought something online by going through the whole checkout process inside facebook itself?

As far as shopping for physical goods is concerned, I'm confident very few has actually done that, period. The main issue lies in humans' "State of Mind".

Many so called f-commerce is actually done via PM (Private Message), customers either commenting on a product post or sending messages back and forth checking on price, sizes, stock availability, payment methods etc and this whole process is very tedious.

Shopping is a "State of Mind"

Imagine in an offline world, we go restaurant for dining, we go barber to trim hair, we go stadium for sports entertainment, in any of these events, no one likes being sold to as we are NOT in the mental state of shopping!

Same goes for online world, we go to ebay to shop, airasia.com for airline tickets, and facebook to checkout friends & family photos and stay updated with gossips, but few actually are in a state of mind to buy things.

And it's notoriously hard trying to change the state of mind and status quo - eg when you logon to Airasia.com, your mind is all about getting cheap airline tickets!

This explains well why most airline or travel website are not yet transformed into successful etailers selling to you everything from A to Z even though tickets are most likely the first thing we as consumers actually buy online. (see chart below released by PayPal)

eCommerce on a Facebook Tab won't cut it

If you take a close look, early attempt at Facebook commerce is mostly about replicating an e-commerce website inside Facebook tab, this, so far has not been getting traction (sales).

Yet, don't count out f-commerce, it is still at its infancy, eventually some company (or Facebook itself) will find a model which will make f-commerce work. Speaking of such, Facebook is already experimenting with new ecommerce initiative such as Facebook gifts, which lets users make purchases for friends directly through facebook.

Also, new innovation on social commece is emerging at speed of light! Checkout this new collaboration by Twitter and Amex which actually you buy and pay via a hashtag #. 

  

No matter how it will eventually work,  you can be assured that it won't be just about duplicating an eCommerce website inside Facebook itself. That's why we didn't do that on webShaper and we decide to build only gorgeous looking design which sync the new arrival, best seller and featured products from the webstore. It smartly integrates social button like Facebook Like, Pin It, G+1 when you hover over the product images (pic below) to enable the merchants' customers easily share what they love inside facebook. If customers click on the products, it will lead directly to the merchant webStore to complete the whole shopping process without compromising the online shopping experience.

Source: Uploaded by user via webShaper on Pinterest

More reading:
Facebook Commerce Has Been A Big Flop 
http://read.bi/11Mhm74

Intuit acquires payvment team, tech and patent
http://tcrn.ch/11O8IoB