UK smartphone spending breezes past tablet, eMarketer

UK retail e-commerce purchases made via smartphone will this year overtake that of tablets, according to eMarketer. 

The former will be worth nearly £18 billion, representing a 49.7% share of all retail m-commerce sales. By comparison, purchases via tablet will account for 49.4% of mobile outlays, with the remaining portion assigned to feature phone. By 2021, retail e-commerce purchases via smartphone will represent 56% of m-commerce sales. 

Overall UK retail e-commerce sales are expected to reach £83.55 billion this year, accounting for more than 19% of total retail sales. By 2021, 25.8% of the latter will be digital. “To put that into context, the proportion in the US will be less than half of the UK total this year, at just 9%,” says Bill Fisher, Senior Analyst at eMarketer. “Indeed, outside of China, the UK is the world’s most advanced retail e-commerce market in terms of proportional sales. And despite, or perhaps because of, the current economic uncertainty in the UK, e-commerce sales continue to post strong growth.”