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

As we approach Holiday 2015 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 e-commerce transactions will take place on smartphones — or be influenced by smartphones — yet most retailers and e-commerce providers still aren’t entirely ready. And yet 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 e-commerce/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 e-commerce conversions still take place on a PC. However smartphones are clearly the dominant computing device for a majority of US consumers and especially those under 30.