Squeezing the most out of Singapore mobile commerce

The mobile commerce market in Singapore has been growing at a very rapid pace. This phenomenon was surveyed by market research company TNS, found that about 5.3 million of the 7.3 million mobile phones (an enormous 72 per cent) in Singapore are smart phones.

Given how app-driven smartphones are, users are therefore learning to get the most out their phones rather than just making a call or texting.

Smartphones have provided new horizons of usability with GPS, camera functions and Internet accessibility, increasing a person’s reliance on the device. Nowadays, people rarely leave home without their smartphones and readily use it on the go.

People who were once merely waiting for friends, waiting for their rides, or in the midst of commuting have found these gaps of idle time turned into periods filled up with activities such as accessing the Internet, reading emails, getting news updates or taking the time to do online shopping.

With the explosive growth of social media and the evolution of e-commerce turning into m-(mobile) commerce, people have made use of their smartphones to find out what their friends have been up to as well as virtually dart into stores to look for items they want, often sharing these products with their friends via social media as well.

These activities can be done in as little time as just a few minutes and users can re-open their apps or web browsers a few hours later to pick up exactly where they left off to continue their shopping spree.

PayPal‘s Online and Mobile Shopping Insights 2011 study reflects this migration of habits by consumers and revealed that the Singapore’s mobile commerce market had grown by a staggering 660 percent, from S$3M in 2010 to reach S$328M last year, with projections that the market will continue to grow ten-fold to reach S$1.3B in 2015.

More people are expected to be using their mobile devices to shop anytime, anywhere from the palm of their hands.

This trend has not gone unnoticed for many businesses as they seek to engage customers either through websites or through mobile applications that provide useful services that either enable the direct purchase of products or offer information and services related to the store, making it easier for consumers to find what they are looking for.

Even mobile sites are not the same as conventional websites. Because of screen size constraints and coding limitations, mobile sites need to be reengineered and optimised to bring out content clearly in a much smaller space than websites viewed on a desktop or laptop.

Considering this significant impact to the economy, government programmes such as Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore’s Digital Concierge (digitalconcierge.sg) have also taken on the role of helping to catalyse the development of mobile applications by putting in place common building blocks so that businesses can create mobile apps with additional features enabling them to do more, including mobile ticketing, business directory listings, payment functions and even mobile website development.

Depending on the specific business, several of such enabler functions can be incorporated into an app to provide a combination of features aligned with the app’s functions and key objectives. Integrating such functions also help both brick-and-mortar businesses and online businesses to develop mobile platforms that feature more capabilities built more cheaply and improve time to market.

With such high growth potential in mobile commerce, more businesses are seeking to establish their place within this lucrative market. Leveraging government-led solutions can certainly provide a means for companies to build their capabilities quickly, giving them the opportunity to plant a firm flag in a very competitive but growing frontier.