Mobile shopping is on the rise, with tablets increasingly acting as the catalyst for the growth of this market. This has been illustrated by a new report from Javelin Strategy and Research, which is based on three online surveys of mobile phone owners and a survey of mobile device (smartphone and tablet) owners.

This survey found that consumers spent more than $20.7 billion on shopping via their mobile devices, especially tablets, as around $5 billion of mobile purchases were made by way of tablets over the last 12 months.

Javelin Strategy and Research stated that the number of people owning tablets is expected to more than double within the next three years, while this rise expected to lead to an explosion in retail purchasing using tablet devices.

More screen real estate = increased spending

The market research and analytics firm further found notable differences between smartphone purchases and tablet purchases. Consumers tend to spend an average of $10 (about R82) more per purchase using a tablet with a large display, compared to the average purchase made through a smartphone, which  has considerably less screen real estate.

The company added that there were also noticeable differences between amount, type, and frequency of purchases within the tablet world between Kindle Fire users and Apple iPad owners for instance. However, it did not not provide any more details about these discrepancies in tablet purchases across brands.  

“With large-screen real estate and mobile capabilities, tablets are the ideal channel to transform PC-based online shoppers into mobile shoppers,” said Mary Monahan, executive VP and research director for mobile at Javelin.

“Increasingly, mobile devices like tablets are being used as shopping tools, but the mobile buying experience is not keeping pace with consumer activity. Apps engage consumers to make purchases. With the upcoming holidays, retailers must prepare for the mobile shopping trend or lose out on the opportunity to convert browsers into buyers.”

In related news, a recent report from Juniper Research found that the value of remote transactions for digital and physical goods purchased via mobile devices is expected to exceed $730 billion (R5840 billion) annually by 2017.