The practice of “showrooming,” or viewing an item in a retail store and then buying it online, has brought the e-commerce threat directly to bricks-and-mortar retailers.
Mobile raises the showrooming threat to a new level since price comparisons are available to shoppers immediately, as they make decisions and browse e-commerce websites in stores.
In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we analyze mobile showrooming’s influence on retail, and examine the various different types of consumer behavior that make up showrooming.
We also look at what the big retailers are doing to combat showrooming, and identify the five broad strategies that will help brick-and-mortar retailers win business from showroomers.
In one dramatic effort to combat showrooming, U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy announced last month that starting March 3, 2013, its stores would match the prices of 19 major onli! ne compe titors, including Apple, Amazon, and Buy.com. Target also has a price-matching policy in effect.
The strength of Apple’s iPad business is collapsing as lower priced, smaller tablets eat into sales, says Citi’s Apple analysts in a new note this morning.
The 9.7-inch iPad’s unit sales were only up 1.8% on a year-over-year basis in the fourth quarter, says Citi, citing IDC data. In developed markets like Apple and Japan, unit sales were actually down quite a bit.
The bigger iPad is being replaced by Apple’s iPad Mini, as well as the 7-inch tablets sold by Samsung and Amazon.
Canalys is still staking its market share estimates on the view that mobile tablets are as relevant to PC market share as desktops and laptops. If we accept that interpretation, Apple was easily on top of the heap during the fourth quarter. Combining iPads and Macs would give it 27 million computer shipments in the fall, or 20.1 percent of the 134 million computers that left factories — the first time it would have had more than a fifth of the market. Not that Apple was the only one having a good time, however. HP reportedly took back second place from Lenovo by shipping 15 million PCs and claiming 11 percent of the market, while Samsung stepped into the top five for the first time at 11.7 million PCs and 9 percent share.
The upswings may have masked deeper problems. Apple and Samsung benefited from the iPad mini and Galaxy Tab lines, but they, Amazon and other tablet makers were reportedly propping up the market. Canalys doesn’t believe Windows 8 or RT moved the needle for demand, noting that laptop shipments were flat year-over-year where tablets surged 75 percent. It was a tough market for most conventional PC builders — just ask Dell — and there’s no immediate signs that it will be any easier for them in 2013.
There’s been indications that Apple staged something of a comeback in the US during the fourth quarter, owing partly to an iPhone 5-related spike. ComScore’s smartphone share data for December appears to bear that out. It estimates that the Apple claimed a 36.3 percent slice of the American market in the last month of 2012: that’s a noticeable boost from 35 percent in November, and two points up since the iPhone 5′s September arrival. Android remained on top at 53.4 percent, but it was once again unusually static, edging down from highs earlier in the year. Other platforms took their usual blows, although there’s no doubt some hopes for revival.
Just don’t anticipate looking for overall cellphone market share. ComScore has switched to focusing on smartphones, and it’s telling a different story than we’ve seen in the past. When only smartphones count, Samsung’s December share left it in second place, at 21 percent — still an increase over prior months, but not as large as Apple’s 36.3 percent. The biggest surprise is LG’s rise to 7.1 percent and fifth place, quite possibly due to the Optimus G and Nexus 4. Enough shifted that the market may be even less recognizable in 2013, for better or worse.
Localytics, a mobile analytics firm, has released a report on the current global market share of Android tablet, and it spells good news for Amazon. According to the report, Amazon’s Kindle brand holds an impressive 33 percent of the U.S. Android tablet market, followed far behind by the Barnes & Noble Nook, Samsung’s Galaxy series, Google’s Nexus 7 and other devices.
Distantly behind Amazon is the Nook with 10 percent, the Samsung Galaxy series with 9 percent and Google’s Nexus 7 with 8 percent. In contrast to the others, Google’s Nexus 7 is just one device that has been around a mere six months. If this kind of growth continues for Google, it will challenge Amazon in the near future. Note: These numbers do not include other, non-Android tablet devices like the iPad, Surface or Playbook.Read >>
Global Smartphone OS Market Run By Two Companies (Strategy Analytics) Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android combined to take over 92 percent of the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a report from Strategy Analytics.
Android secured 70.1 percent of the fourth quarter 2012 global smartphone market, while Apple’s iPhones accounted for 22 percent, leaving a mere 7.9 percent to competing platforms (poor Microsoft). In terms of overall shipments, global smartphones grew 38 percent annually from 157.0 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011 to 217.0 million in the fourth quarter last year. The full report can be found here. Read >>
What a difference a few years makes. Four years ago, Apple analysts fretted over iPod shipments and computer sales when an earnings call rolled around. All the early chatter is now focused on whether surging iPhone and iPad sales will even be enough to meet soaring expectations.
The iPad, only a rumor two years ago, accounted for 24% of revenue last quarter. The iPhone, meanwhile, has jumped from 10% of revenue at the beginning of 2008 to 39% last quarter–and nearly 50% at the beginning of last year. With the tablet market still in its infancy and huge opportunities still available in mobile, the shift in Apple’s revenues has only just begun. All of which should futher underline the changing nature of their business: Apple is essentially a mobile computing company.
Which is not to say the rest of the company isn’t growing. Mac shipments were up 20.7% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner–even as the rest of the PC market fell 5.9%. It’s just that they have not kept up with the astronomic growth of the company’s mobile products.
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
