Laptops In Big Decline, Smartphones “At Saturation” For Under-30 Crowd

As we approach 2015’s holiday season, the mobile outlook for product sellers is mixed. Mobile ad spending is rising quickly, and retailers and others have recently spent much more time and resources on their mobile user experiences, thanks in part to Google. However, it may not be enough.

This holiday season, more ecommerce transactions will take place on smartphones — or be influenced by smartphones — but most retailers and ecommerce providers still aren’t entirely ready. Even though we’re now in year 8 AiP (after iPhone).

There remains a significant gap between smartphone traffic and conversions due to the persistent challenges of weak user experiences and checkout flows. According to MarketLive, in Q3 “year-over-year smartphone visits were up 35 percent and accounted for three out of every ten site visits.”

Smartphone visits are hovering just above 30 percent of all ecommerce/retail site traffic, yet conversions are just under 14 percent, or roughly half their traffic share. Part of that discrepancy may also be explained by the fact that many smartphone-influenced conversions happen offline.

Adobe has predicted that mobile traffic this Thanksgiving will exceed PC traffic. There are others pointing in the same direction. For example, xAd recently released a survey based report that found mobile devices now exceed PCs in terms of “importance” in making purchase decisions.

Source: xAd Mobile Path to Purchase study 2015

The 2015 survey of roughly 3,000 US and UK mobile users found that the PC had fallen in importance over the past two years, while smartphones had gained modestly in their relative role in purchase decision making.

Last week, the Pew Research Center released its latest “Demographics of Device Ownership” study for the US market. The report asserts that 45 percent of US adults have some sort of tablet device. In addition, the report says that for some groups, smartphone ownership has now reached “saturation.”

According to Pew’s data, 10 percent fewer young adults (78 percent) own traditional desktop or laptop computers today than in 2010 (88 percent). At the same time, 86 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds own a smartphone.

We do live in a cross-platform world, and most ecommerce conversions still take place on a PC. However, smartphones are clearly the dominant computing device for a majority of US consumers, especially those under 30.